Why I write

When I was a little girl 

I was told I could do anything

Be anything 

Achieve anything 

I was told that I would always be enough

And I was convinced 

That on my daddy's shoulders 

I was as much a hero as anybody 

And in my mother's arms 

I was more of a princess than any girl

But as I grew

I learned

I learned that all I believed 

Was a beautiful lie 

To disguise 

A horribly ugly beast 

That my parents

Teachers

Preachers

Friends

would call

Reality.

And I grew

I grew up

I grew into a woman

And I felt pain

Never being good enough for my father

And I felt heartache

Never being pretty enough for the boys

And I felt abandoned 

Never keeping friends for more than a year

And I felt alone.

I was convinced that no one believed as a child, what I had believed.

I was convinced that no one felt the way I did. 

I was convinced that everyone had it all together, but me...

Well,, me..

I was some screwed up exception. 

Until one day

I wandered into my seventh grade English teacher's room

I don't know why 

But my footsteps led me back 

To the place where this woman taught me

An escape from "reality"

To the woman who taught me 

I CAN do anything 

BE anything

ACHIEVE anything

And she said, "why don't you write?

Why don't you tell the world what you feel, 

what you've discovered, 

That other girls, seventeen and broken, 

will know

that somewhere 

out there, 

there is a girl, feeling what they're feeling. 

And that they won't have to be alone.

Because you'll be there."

And I wrote

and wrote

and wrote

Until finally

Her words came to fruition

And my writing

Saved a girl

Drowning in depression

Captured by her wrong

But hopeful, and searching 

for a way out. 

By my writing

I saved myself.

And that

Is why I write.