One Life Saved, Many Lives Changed

I first delved into the depths of poetry

About a year and a half ago.

Before that, words were just words,

And I was just me, a girl,

Without direction, without any idea.

On the outside I seemed happy as could be,

Like a bud blossoming beautifully into a flower;

But on the inside, a red-hot fire burned,

That could not be extinguished.

My insecurities ate away at my insides.

One night, after my family went to sleep,

And the whole world became quiet,

I locked myself in my room and used

A pillow to muffle my sobs;

A crippled girl crumpled in the corner.

After this routine continued

Every night when the world went to sleep,

I’d finally had enough of feeling sorry for myself,

And decided to do something about it.

But what could I do? What could I do?

While destruction and violence seemed tempting,

I knew it would only bring temporary relief.

By nature, I was kind, not aggressive,

So why would I begin then?

Becoming someone else was not an option.

Finally, it hit me,

Like a ball thrown into a glove,

Something I could do;

Something nonthreatening,

Something I could be.

I dug out a notebook from the deep recesses of my closet,

Which was callously buried under a mountain of clothes.

It had a clean red cover, and had never been used.

I grabbed my pencil and gawked at the blank pages of possibility.

Everything I could write swarmed like bees around my head.

Gingerly, I turned to a page somewhere in the middle,

That I would know, but no one else could find.

Then, the page already muddled with splotches of tears,

I began to write down all of my feelings.

As the tears poured out, so did my heart onto the page.

This became my therapy,

Writing was an outlet of sorts,

Where I could just be myself.

For nobody could judge me,

I was alone, but not lonely.

Zigzagged across the pages,

Having ignored the neat, ruled lines,

Everything my heart felt, my soul knew

Was put into words.

It all seemed less scary, less foreign that way.

One day, I realized I no longer needed to cry,

The overwhelming pressure didn't move me to tears.

In fact, I felt rather giddy; I was happy

To begin to write about my day

In the little red notebook.

The prison of a school that I attended each day,

Announced it would be hosting a poetry slam.

Anyone could participate with their original poem,

It could be about anything, anything, anything.

Endless possibilities awakened the eyes of each tired student.

Could I read a poem? I asked myself,

But quickly shook off the idea.

For my notebook was just a jumble of words,

No structure, no stanzas, no poems.

Those words were vulnerable, and I felt I couldn't share.

But then my English teacher awakened my spirit

By encouraging me to enter a poem.

She boasted of my talent;

What talent? I thought, but despite my hesitations,

Her seed in my head had been planted.

That night, after the day’s activities had been done,

And the rest of the world was asleep,

Instead of writing new feelings, new thoughts,

I began to organize the old; I shuffled

Words into stanzas, and began playing with rhymes.

After a few days of cleaning up my word vomit,

I realized that what I had written

Could actually become a poem.

A series of quatrains filled with end rhymes,

Became possible amid the jumble of phrases.

One stanza, two stanzas, three stanzas, four...

I became addicted to rhythm I felt;

Each time four lines coexisted,

Angels sang harmoniously from above,

And my words became phrases, my phrases ideas.

I never realized how many emotions I actually felt

Until I began reading my poem out loud.

In front of my mirror, an anxious girl stood,

Who’d had no idea of her past depression,

And no idea of how greatly she’d recovered.

My heart beat like drum inside of my ears,

As I waited for my turn to read.

Suddenly I was about to tell a room full of strangers,

About everything I had gone through.

Would anybody understand?

But as soon as I stood on that stage,

And my words flowed through the microphone,

All of my fears like ice melted away.

I was happy to finally be able to show the world

The raw, real me that for so long I’d been hiding.

A few tears escaped from my soft blue eyes,

But tears of relief they were.

The effort it took to keep the wall built around me,

Was a lot more than I’d realized

Until I just let it fall.

After the reading was done,

And my feelings were released into the world,

Like a pack of wild dogs roaming free,

Everything spread out, and I finally had space

To think, to feel, to breathe.

What I never expected from reading that poem,

Was the amount of love from others I felt.

“Your poem’s amazing!” was accompanied by,

“I’m so glad to know that I’m not

The only one who feels this way.”

That poem connected me to a world of peers,

Who had previously judged and been judged.

My friends embraced me closer, strangers did, too,

And just like that I had a support system,

Of people who genuinely cared about me.

Talking about my real, true feelings,

Instead of hiding behind a masking smile,

Actually made other people happy.

My pain, my struggles, and overcoming it all,

Put relief into the hearts of everyone who felt the same.

I want to shout it from the rooftops, let everyone know,

That words can make a difference, they matter!

A quiet voice can change the world if only it speaks up;

The power inside your heart is more than you know,

And an outlet exists for all who know how to access it.