When you’re five
You’re asked “What do you want to be
When you grow up?”
And I wondered
Why can’t I be
Who I already am?
Maybe, I’m not the line leader
Maybe, I don’t always get picked
First for dodgeball
Or anything
Maybe, I get picked last
More often then not
Maybe, I get called
Some names
But they’re not so bad
Maybe ugly
And slow seemed
Typical
And when the boy
With the dirty blond hair
And the blue polo shirt
Called me
“Burnt Toast
In a bag of white bread”
The teacher said
To my dad
“He’s just five
He doesn’t know”
But he knew
How to hate
And maybe, I was
The wrong colored
Crayon in a box
Full of perfect
Maybe I wanted to be
Someone else
When I grew up
And they told me
To dream
And even those
Weren’t quite right
Krysten Brannick said
“I want to be a vet”
And Katlyn Catigan
Wanted to drive taxis
My teacher smiled
And I said-
Even my dreams
Got called names
Silly
Dumb
“Do something
Practical”
When I was eight
I told my substitute teacher
“Fuck off”
He said
I should be locked
In a cage
Little did he know
My skin was enough
I didn’t have the key
To unlock
A white face
When I was 12
I got detention
For bullying
When I was 13
I bit
A girl in my class
I got written up
When I bit her
Again
I got suspended
I cut this girls hair
Clear off her head
Took her ponytail
Phewf
Dropped to the floor
Blonde
Day after
Wretched after day
I used my sharp tongue
To cut
Confidence
I could slice you
With my words
My mind
Trained
To be quicker
Than yours
You can’t
Out-dress me
You can’t
Call me names
If you’re
Too busy hoping
I don’t call you one
First
Belonging
To a race
Of freaks
To a tribe
Of misfits
Unfit for friend-
Ship
Sailing on a sea of
Oxycoton and cocain
Swimming in aderol
To drown the urge to be-
Longing for a place
Where fitting in
Is to just be-
Longing for the cure
That I always had
When they asked me
What I wanted to be
When I grew up
I said
“An artist
That’s where I belong”
“I fall from elegance with a dull thud, and I apologize for my awkward sadness. I sometimes believe that I don’t belong around people, that I belong to all the leap days that didn’t happen. The way light and darkness mix under my skin has become a storm. You don’t see the lightning, but you hear the echoes.”
I looked around and thought “there’s nothing here for me.”
So where was it? Where is it? Where’s the thing?
When you realize you’re not the one it’s galactic, or outer-spacial, or cosmically tragic. It’s a star burning too bright, combusting from the inside out—charred, chunked, jagged hunks of it self being spat into the universe, turning to depraved astroids, smoking boulders called Disappointment and Sex and Shattered and You-Should-Have-Known-Better. My heart’s like that. Consumed by fire, licked by flames called Why-Not-Me-When-I-Love-You-So-Much. I’m breaking up inside, like the sun crashing down on the planet, so my heart crushes the spirits of my body’s solar system, orbiting thoughts surrounding You.
I’m sort of like a half eaten apple. Not even half eaten. Picked at. Someone stuck their thumb nail and popped my shiny flesh and dug out a little bit of my insides. I was dropped on the concrete and bounced a few times and got these soft, vulnerable patches barely protected by this thin outer peal that wasn’t really so shiny anymore, it was kind of dingy and matted down. I got kicked behind a desk and I stayed there and got soft and concentrated and started changing into something I wasn’t before. I’m just this beat up, disgusting thing that no one really wants but everyone used to want and it doesn’t really matter what I was cause what I am is what I am and you don’t want to take a bite out of me.
Do you ever look at dark city windows and wonder where those people are? I do. I might see hundreds of squares of yellow light but all I can focus on are the dark spots. I like to make up stories in my head of where they are, what they’re doing. Maybe they went away to the country. Or upstate. Maybe they’re shopping in Saks. Maybe they’re buying new furniture, they’re newlyweds and they’re making their dream apartment. Or they’re having a baby and they left the City to raise her in Rhode Island and they’re coming back for all of their stuff as soon as they find the perfect, old, white house, with the wrap around porch and two swings outside the front door to sit on and drink lemonade in the summer. Or maybe it’s a studio apartment and a dancer lives there, and he’s always out working on Broadway and in Lincoln Center and he calls his parents from his cell phone and says things like “Sorry I’m in a rush, love you” and “I’ll call you after the show, miss you”. Or it’s not even an apartment it’s actually an office building and the CEO actually gave his employees a long weekend off to spend time with their families. Especially this one guy that works there and stays in Manhattan on the weeknights but goes back home to Pennsylvania on the weekends, and this weekend he gets to stay through Monday and see his daughter’s first school play, so it’s really special for him, and he’s so thankful he buys his boss a coffee mug. His boss tears up cause he never gets anything, you know. Or it’s possible it is a quaint one bedroom apartment and this one guy lives there but he met a girl in his class and she’s been staying with him, and they don’t even have sex, they just turn off all of the lights and they watch movies and he holds her hand up to his heart and kisses her fingers and sweet things like that, he doesn’t even touch her in anyway that makes her ears hot or her legs shake, and he looks into her eyes and says things like “You look beautiful” and he’s not talking about her face which is just a stupid face she didn’t even make or deserve or anything and people look at it and say she’s beautiful but they don’t mean it like he means it when he says it and doesn’t have sex with her. Maybe they’re in that window and they’re actually home, you know, it’s not even empty or anything.
I left the light on in my kitchen when I left just now. I’m on the 8th floor so people can see me from kind of far but it’s not too high so it’s kind of an obvious window to look at. And I didn’t want it to be dark when I left. I didn’t want people imagining things about where I was. They’d look at the yellow square like all the rest and not think twice. Or maybe something like “Oh she’s doing her homework” or “She’s reading a book” something ordinary like that. I don’t want to be the star of anyone’s fantasies. So, I left the light on when I left.
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“That’s why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can’t control life, at least you can control your version.”
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Being special sucks. I can assure you that if you are like everyone else, you are very lucky. When you’re special, it’s like you’re only special in-so-much-as you are special to yourself. I mean, you can see your promise and potential and innovation; you can hear the multifaceted, illuminating intonations of your brilliant mind humming a chorus of harmonic fantasia. You know you’re special when you close your eyes and you see things that no one in this world could have imagined. No one in this world could conjure up the images your idiosyncratic mind could. And you’re certain of the extreme disparity there is between you and mediocrity and your teachers and your parents see it and you see it and I guess the world sees it too. And it’s like a disability. It’s like worse then walking with a limp or being fat or being ugly because no one feels bad for you. They envy you and your weird mind. They tease you. And they hate you. And they spite you. And it’s a real deep down hate, darker and more primal then a child’s impulse to tease and taunt the weaker or smaller or dumber classmate, because they know that you are stronger and you know that you are stronger, so they don’t try to tear you down, break you, win, instead, they pick you apart, little by little, and it’s almost like you don’t even notice. Then one day you wake up thinking “Who am I and why am I so lonely and why is their a gaping hole at the base of my throat that makes me feel as if I can’t swallow and I’m being swallowed up at the same time.” No one ever hears stories about special people being sad and afraid. They are privileged, that’s what everyone says, they are happy, that’s what everyone thinks. I bet that’s what you think. No one feels bad for you because you’re beautiful and smart and talented. What am I talking about, right? I’m talking about my mind and my face and the fact that I wish I could have been average, mediocre, simple at best. I wish I was like everyone: vanilla, white bread, cookie cutter, Anglo-Saxon. And it’s not even about being brown instead of white. It’s the fact that when you’re “special” and unique and different like I am, only you think your special, alone, in the end. But when you’re just normal, then it’s easier to find someone normal, someone average, like you, and that person makes you feel special, sees you as special because they love you. What I’m saying is, when you’re born special like I was, and you don’t necessarily need anyone to make you special, then no one comes along, and no one loves you like you want to be loved. I guess I’m saying that there are worse things then being average. You could be special. You could be alone. Like I am.
kangalex asked: Your DIY galaxy sneakers r the shit!!
Thanks!
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middleofthenightdaydreams asked: Rae, I needed to tell you how wonderful and inspiring AND heartbreaking is your "Tears are my only defense" entry. Needless to say, I ended up with tears in my eyes. Beautiful indeed. Love, Anna
Thank you so much.
Thinning bands, lost elastic, snapping, snapping, threatening back. Fragile, fragile, notwithstanding ties I’ve made, translucent thread with bits of indigo woven in. This spiderweb of string, connecting me to other beating hearts with thicker, crimson blood, with cobalt tinges and broad sapphire veins. Stronger people, with selfishness embedded in their tissue. And I am connected to them, but only with feeble, fragile, tiny, thin translucent ties. Barely there, barely noticed, barely me, barely baring my barely soul, barely, barely mattering to barely, hardly anyone.