Every single time I am
screamed at and gotten
rid,
I am enraged and I don't
even know what I
Did.
(What do you want from me?)

I knew everything when I was seventeen.
Every answer I would think of and every
topic I made up when it was something I never
heard of in my life.
My life,
I thought,
was on everyone else’s mind.
I told what I had suffered and been through
up to that point.

I’m twenty, and I now realize I can’t predict
the future.
I thought I went through enough when I was seventeen
and turns out at that age I was still dealing with
enough baggage.
My life,
is something,
I am told to not talk about,
nor your problems,
or yourself.

Everyone matters,
so acknowledge it.
We may never sit in this circle
again.
As we disperse,
move on with the memory of the
laughter and topic.
Learn from what
you don’t know.

To the parent who doesn’t know how to
put together a child’s birthday party.
For the teenage boy who lies and says he doesn’t
cry.
This is for the girl who learns the hard way
to not play dumb.
To the middle school teacher who’s heart is pounding before
their next class.
For the control freak who has absolutely nothing better to do.

Get a life,
but get the thought that you are
the top of everything out of your head.
Grow, learn, and
question.

Returning to the village sounded like a nightmare
at first.
I’d be ignored and hate the few streets I was
permitted to roam.
I returned to the village and forgot what I
feared.
I received thousands of hello and everyone
came back to me all at once.
Sometimes when we are apart
we philosophize and teach ourselves to become
angry at the hard times.
Hard times come and go, and friends take
time to be family.
Respect is there and hate is nowhere.
I’ve never been this happy.

Sometimes you make me
feel the urge and desire to play hookie
and ask any random dangerous man
to light it for me.
There have been days
I have blown off my girlfriends
and gave that time to be alone with you
in a bathroom stall.
You have been one to wreck my decisions.
You are a part of me,
you should love me so I don’t
decide to get on the back of a motorcycle
with someone I never met.
Who knows where I will go?
I pay for every time you
told me to put the fork down and
you wouldn’t let me eat.
I thought I had you and would
never let go of you.
I saw a young girl who looked
like I did before I dedicated
my thinking to you.
She had a teddy bear in her hands
and looked at me scared.
It was you who told me to blob my eyes
with liner and keep my hair in my face
so nobody would see my black eye.
That girl reminded me that I did fine without you.
I am glad I stopped thinking of you
and dealt rather than keeping you.
I don’t love you,
Bipolar Depression.
I never let anything or anyone I have
dictate my life.
Your phases come and go,
and when they do,
it breaks up my health, my dignity,
and my relationships.
Friends come first,
so I deal with you.
I live a better life once I am
done with you.

Many parties and dinner gatherings ended
hours before we wanted everyone
to pack up and go home.
Though surrounded by friends
I’d been taken by the hand and
drawn to the other direction
to leave the teenagers alone
though I was thirteen.

Many trips to the beach became
destinations for my tantrums.
There was never a way my
method of finding comfort would
fulfill what they wanted.

These are still labeled bad memories
and hard situations I had to deal with.
Vacation was something I never looked
forward to nor did I want to be seen
the way I was compared to all
of them.

Now,
when we gather on the Vineyard
at whoever’s house for dinner,
they are okay about it.
It, meaning me,
at the house.

We never sat together
all ten of us young adults til the recent year.
It is nice to be at the table and see how we
went down different paths but managed
to cross now we have grown.

Though years ago when we were meeting
together on vacation,
I dreaded the day and seeing all of you.
You may have stabbed me in the heart by
helping me with sailboats and social skills, so
you won’t see me on a boat and you don’t
have to make up for it and bring me into
the group.
Because you did not **** me.
I like going to the island to see you.
I meant it this time.