This one’s for the smart kids.

This one is for the honor students, and the straight A students

This is for the kids who stay up half the night studying, and the kids who work their ***** off for their grades

This is for the kids who can define and spell Antidisestablishmentarianism or tell you what DNA stands for (it’s deoxyribonucleic acid by the way)

This is  for the teachers pets, the geeks, and the nerds. And the student who skips parties so she can study for her test.

This is for the kids who can solve complex mathematic equations in their head

This is for the kids who know that you don’t use “I” in a formal essay, and that okay is spelled O-K-A-Y, not O-K.

This is for the kids who can recite pi up to 200 hundred places, and the ones who can solve a rubix cube in 2 minutes flat.

The ones who take two language classes, and the ones who have been saving for college since they were born.

Geniuses of the 21st century, this is for you.

I would give you a gold star and a check plus for what you’ve done, but I’m sure you have gotten plenty of those. So I think I will just tell you something that only we could understand; Superb job at pursuing your academic careers with such ambitious outlooks on the world, and for having such admirable self-motivation.

I know that sometimes it ***** to be academically inclined, but in 5, 10, 20 years you will be working in some law firm or doing something you love and making multiple figures while the kids who blow off their school life will be stuck working for minimum wage at McDonalds or as a waitress for the rest of their lives.

So keep writing essays and doing extra credit because it’s not enough to survive high school, you have to thrive, and reach for the metaphorical stars.

Starlight star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight.

I wish for world peace

I wish dreams were reality and reality was like a dream

I wish for a world where the underdogs can thrive and the top dogs still survive

I wish that there would be no more fighting, no war.

I wish to live in a world where there is a cure for every disease, where no one ever cries.

I want to live in a world without anxiety, without lies.

I wish for a world where everyone smiles because they can, not because they have to.

I wish to live in a world where I’m fine isn’t a lie, and the word poor wasn’t in our vocabularies.

I want a world with only love, not hate.

But with out pain there would be no comfort,

without lies there would be no truth,

with out frowns there would be no smiles, no laughs.

Without death we couldn’t fully appreciate life, without illness there could be no health.

Without fear and anxiety there would be no relaxation

Without sadness no one could be happy.

Without lies how could there be truth
Yes, I wish that this world was more accepting of everyone, despite their differences, but where’s the fun in that?

because If we couldn’t cry, we also wouldn’t be able to smile.

Because if we didn’t have our battle wounds how would we show we are winning the war?

Because as my grandmother used to say to my mother as she wound her hair into tight painful braids, beauty hurts.

because you can’t give up the negatives in this world without sacrificing the positives too.

So after the sun has set, and when the world has gone quiet,I  wish on that one little star, but I wish no longer wish for happiness, I just wish for balance.

When I was young, no older than 8 I had tea parties with my grandfather. He the host, my grandmothers porcelain dolls the guests. It was my favorite thing about visiting him, because tea parties were what grown ups do.

But that little girl with the small hands and big heart is gone now, or at the very least she’s pretty **** good at hide and seek.

That little girl has now realized that life fights *****, kicking you in the stomach and waiting for you to get back up, just so it can hit you in the face.

she has learned that flying and falling are the same thing except the latter has a more permanent destination.

She now isn’t learning how to read books, but the emotion in people’s eyes, the fakeness of their smiles, the hollowness in their voice.

Now she knows that if you bite off more then you can chew there is a good chance you’ll choke.

She can now see that life truly is beautiful, a beautiful disaster, stuffed with heartbreak and pain, smiles and laughs, family and friends, highs, lows, and change, constant change, because if you aren’t moving foreword, where are you going?

She now realizes that life is to short to care, but too important to not care. In other words, life contradicts its self over and over and over and over again
That little girl had inhibitions, she wanted to be a doctor or a fashion designer, or an actress.  This “young adult” still has those dreams, but she knows that that’s all they are.... Dreams. And soon she will be on her own and have to wake up and do something more realistic.

So now I have tea parties on my own, the tea is replaced by coffee, that keeps me alert enough to get through the day, the dolls are replaced by the quiet whisper of the voices in my head.

It’s not pre-show jitters or first day butterflies, it’s a different kind of fear.

I close my eyes, I am 11 years old again, my mother yells that we have to leave in 10 minutes. And so it begins. I start shaking, I run to the bathroom with a stomach ache that was nonexistent less than a minute ago. I walk into the living room, sit on the couch and let the flood gates open, screaming, crying anything to try to excorsize the demon taking over my body, tearing me open from the inside out.

They say everyone has their demons, mine, an anxiety disorder.

I am twelve and the panic attacks don’t let up. My anxiety like torrential rain, threatening to flood the city. I have stopped seeing my friends, and leaving my house unless forced. I contemplated suicide often, seeing it as my only escape. My mother brings me to the doctor and I am put on medication and sent to a therapist.

To the outside world I am getting better, Maybe this was just a phase.

I am 13, and off the medication. I had survived my first year of school and even started hanging out with a few people who are now my closest friends. Life was looking up, I could see the light, but that didn’t mean I was out of the tunnel.

But I’m not better. My eyes are dull and my smile is faker than barbie.

I am 14, school is harder, and so is spending time with my “friends.” One girl,  I thought we were equals. It started with a joke, harmless. She would poke me in the back, joking that I would get kidney failure. Then she hit harder, still “joking”. That is when the  rumors started. All because I wore a guy’s shirt and a rainbow bracelet one day. I started to get nervous to go to school, scared that I would have to face her again.

Have you ever tried screaming underwater? And no one can hear you and those who can pretend they don’t? That’s what it’s like, screaming and nobody can hear me.

I am fifteen, sitting on the bus, an already stressful situation. A girl sits with me, as people do. She forces me to either move in or be crushed. I slide against the cold metal of the bus, creating the most amount of space between me and her. But it’s not enough, I start getting a feeling that I knew all too well. I was having a panic attack. My sympathetic nervous system triggers my fight or flight response, my adrenaline levels raise, my body preparing for a war, a battle that will never come, at least not physically. I can’t breath, I can’t speak, I can’t even think. The voices of the people around me blur into indistinguishable mumbles, every light is too bright, every noise too loud.  

All I want to do I go home and drown in a sea of loud music and blankets, warm and safe in my own space. But I have to do what I do every day, and push through the next seven hours pretending to be okay.

And now my mind is not my own. My thoughts fall in to this never ending void of what ifs and could this-es. Spiraling out of control, my own personal self destruct button. I claw at the edges, desperately trying to escape. But how can you escape your own mind? Your own thoughts?

If I have the freedom of speech, why do I feel imprisoned by my words?

This is my life now, I live in constant fear that someday my anxiety will take over my life and never relinquish control. I am scared to look towards the future, because the guess and check method doesn’t work for life.

I have lived my whole life with irrational fear, but now I am truly afraid.