I am a woman, firm and strong.
A woman that will not stand for what is wrong.
I am a woman who will fight for what is right.
A woman in darkness who will shine like a light.
I am a woman who strives to do the best.
A woman who perseveres and will not rest.

I am a woman who cares for what is small.
A woman who is unique and special to all.
I am a woman filled with love.
A woman who aims to soar like a dove.
I am a woman, strike a rock, if you strike me.
A woman, yes.
A woman is who I love to be.

The last time you were sad. -they asked

I couldn't answer.

Because you see, the thing is.

The sadness never stopped.

I’m curious about your experience of time. Do you feel like life is moving really quickly? Is your music one way to sort of turn it over and reflect on it?

WILLOW SMITH: I mean, time for me, I can make it go slow or fast, however I please, and that’s how I know it doesn’t exist.

JADEN SMITH: It’s proven that how time moves for you depends on where you are in the universe. It’s relative to beings and other places. But on the level of being here on earth, if you are aware in a moment, one second can last a year. And if you are unaware, your whole childhood, your whole life can pass by in six seconds. But it’s also such a thing that you can get lost in.

How have you gotten better?

WILLOW SMITH: Caring less what everybody else thinks, but also caring less and less about what your own mind thinks, because what your own mind thinks, sometimes, is the thing that makes you sad.

JADEN SMITH: Exactly. Because your mind has a duality to it. So when one thought goes into your mind, it’s not just one thought, it has to bounce off both hemispheres of the brain. When you’re thinking about something happy, you’re thinking about something sad. When you think about an apple, you also think about the opposite of an apple. It’s a tool for understanding mathematics and things with two separate realities. But for creativity: That comes from a place of oneness. That’s not a duality consciousness. And you can’t listen to your mind in those times — it’ll tell you what you think and also what other people think.

WILLOW SMITH: And then you think about what you think, which is very dangerous.

Do you think of your new music as a continuation of your past work?

JADEN SMITH: That’s another thing: What’s your job, what’s your career? Nah, I am. I’m going to imprint myself on everything in this world.

What are the things worth having?

WILLOW SMITH: A canvas. Paint. A microphone.

JADEN SMITH: Anything that you can shock somebody with. The only way to change something is to shock it. If you want your muscles to grow, you have to shock them. If you want society to change, you have to shock them.

WILLOW SMITH: That’s what art is, shocking people. Sometimes shocking yourself.

So is the hardest education the unlearning of things?*

WILLOW SMITH: Yes, basically, but the crazy thing is it doesn’t have to be like that.

JADEN SMITH: Here’s the deal: School is not authentic because it ends. It’s not true, it’s not real. Our learning will never end. The school that we go to every single morning, we will continue to go to.

WILLOW SMITH: Forever, ‘til the day that we’re in our bed.

JADEN SMITH: Kids who go to normal school are so teenagery, so angsty.

WILLOW SMITH: They never want to do anything, they’re so tired.

WILLOW SMITH: I went to school for one year. It was the best experience but the worst experience. The best experience because I was, like, “Oh, now I know why kids are so depressed.” But it was the worst experience because I was depressed.

pain killer after pain killer.

oh baby girl, you know better than that.

pain killer after pain killer.

*oh baby girl, you know the sadness never dies out.

And somehow believing I could find happiness at the bottom of a liquor bottle.
Only left feeling as empty as the glass by the end of the night.
Shots.
In the form of bullets to my head.
I wish.

And I should have joined a masquerade.
Believe me.
I wore masks all the time.

If you look into the mirror,

and don't like what you see,

you can find out first hand,

what it's like to be me.

smeared lipstick,
running mascara,
"you said forever",
eats a tub of ice cream,
repeatedly stabs your voodoo doll in the chest.

01:52 am
have you ever asked yourself like why you so lonely?*

01:53 am
or empty?

that maybe you give too much of your essence to people and never leave any of you for yourself

01:55 am
i know i do

02:05 am
and like that's maybe why i get so attached to humans

because in them,
i find myself

02:07 am
i need to change, because things shouldn't be this way

02:10 am
but it's hard sometimes you know, when most days you don't leave the house because you feel unworthy of the space you take up

02:16 am
so you'd much rather disintegrate into soil because you've become all too familiar with people stepping over you and admiring the outcome of your beauty but never the roots of your pain

02:19 am
i spend so much effort watering people in order for them to grow and hardly get enough sun shine to feed my own soul

02:25 am*
because i don't know how to do anything else but care for everyone but myself

Numb?

Numb* means no pain.
Numb means no sadness.
Numb means no fear.

Numb?

Well.
Numb means happiness.

Numb only applied to the things that didn't make you feel good inside.
That made the ground crumble beneath your feet.
It applies to the things that made you cry at night, to the reasons there were slits on your wrists.

Numb meant your loneliness proceeded to not exist.
Numb meant you weren't the only one facing the world,
(a world so cold, yet equally sympathetic.)
Numb meant you didn't need pills to make you happy, or shall I say, feel less worthy of life.

THE WAY IN WHICH INSECURITY MAKES A HOME OF MY BODY,
LEAVING HER PILES OF SELF-DOUBT AND ANXIETY LYING ON THE FLOOR.
AS I CONTINUE TO STUMBLE AWAY FROM MIRRORS,
TRYING TO FIND A REFLECTION SHE HAS NOT BECOME A PART OF,
SHE REVEALS TO ME,
THAT THE MIRROR DOES NOT HAVE TO BE CRACKED IN ORDER FOR ME TO LOOK BROKEN.
I ASK HER WHY SHE HAS NOT MOVED OUT ALREADY,
AND SHE SAYS IT IS NOT HER FAULT THAT I ALWAYS LEAVE THE DOORS OPEN.
I TELL HER OF HOW I MISPLACED THE KEYS IN THE HANDS OF PEOPLE WHO COULD NOT LOVE ALL THAT I AM.
AND WITHOUT HESITATION,
SHE ASKS ME WHY I HAVE NOT YET CHANGED THE LOCKS.

Pain.

In the form of the way father
clenched his fists in anger,
and mother's grip around the red wine bottle at 3 am in the morning.

And I sort of fell in love with plastic cups.
The ability to fall, and never break apart.
Because, as for me.
I'm just a glass positioned a little to close to the edge of the table.

i felt you did not have to be buried in cemeteries, to feel dead inside.

NO WAIT, BUT BUT, WHERE ARE YOU MOVING TO?*

WELL SEE, I AM GOING TO LIVE IN THE MOMENT.
-
**ARE YOU COMING?

And everyday that I woke.
I had to remind myself.
Remind myself,
you were no longer here.
That your arms were no longer around for me to run into.
That your shoulder was no longer around for me to cry on.

*That I had to lean on me.

don't you dare
give up on this life

not tonight


not tomorrow

not ever.

don't you dare
give up on this life

not tonight


not tomorrow*

*not ever.

He said he'd rob a bank for me.

What?

No!

Then he gets caught. Like a fish on a hook, and where does that leave me?
Talking to him through a pitch black telephone, on the other side of a glass window, on some old wooden chair.
Seeing him dressed in orange uniform and a guard behind his back, like loving him was some sort of crime in itself, and then before you know it, times up.
A mere few minutes, for him to see how much I loved him, and it'd break my heart, like how a glass lands harshly on tile floors, it'd break me every time.
To think he'd have to get locked up behind metal poles, every night, when my arms would have done enough cuffing.

I couldn't.

I wouldn't.

And we made a promise.
To schedule a day at some random cafe.
Where we'd sit, with an over-sized cup of coffee.
And talk for hours about everything we hated about the world.

And you can't seem to recognise that person in the mirror.

Who is she?
Where is she?
How is she?

                                              But she knows.
                                      And what she knows
                                                  saddens her.

In that mirror.

She is her insecurities.
She is her regrets,
She is her failures.

In that mirror.

She is here.
She is there.
She is nowhere to be found.

In that mirror.

She is lost.
She is broken.
She is damaged.

Wait...

Maybe I know that person.
Maybe that person,

                                                        ­        Is
                                                      ­         Me.

SWEETHEART,

FOR SOME,
LOVE IS THE CURE.

AND

FOR SOME,
LOVE IS THE DISEASE.

I slid the blade across my skin.
1 time.
2 times.
3 times.
So many times, actually.

TELL THEM HOW CLOSELY YOU WOULD WATCH YOUR BATTERY DIE, TELL THEM HOW YOUR HEART WORKS THE SAME WAY, TELL THEM YOU ARE SO TIRED OF BEING USED, TELL THEM YOU ARE DEAD.

The type of girl who looks into your eyes, and instead of noticing the bright brown hue of the iris, peers into the darkness of your pupils.


The kind of girl who would apologize for being so easy to leave.


The type of girl who will write a book full of poems about you, just so she can burn the pages when she fills it up.

And though I may not mention it,
I need you to remain and sit in place within my life.
I'm home, I don't mind a few renovations but you can't move out.
Change the furniture, change the setting, change the colours of this love, but don't pack up.
Don't relocate, because I can't leave with you, hence I live with you.
Continue to settle, continue to speak your plans to my walls, we'll breathe life into them.
And may the building of this love never feel the clocks run forward.

by Dvniel Jones

i did the best i could,
for who i was,
at the time.

And as much as they tell us to be ourselves.
That what?
"Everybody else is taken."

God knows who told them that everybody else was who you wanted to be.