I've always believed there's no wrong way to be
No right point of view, no right way to see1075Please respect copyright.PENANACSVyaEPqGC
Because obviously there are bad people in the world
But how could I be sure I'm not one of them?
.
When did it become a fad to want to die?
When did we start to accumulate this shared experience
of suffering and stuttered apologies
for things we never could have controlled anyways?
How could I explain to my mother the years of breaking skin1075Please respect copyright.PENANAkTxW0rCGmd
just to feel anything akin to fullness?1075Please respect copyright.PENANAe12IaLz1aU
This whole mess I've gotten into of broken promises
and broken people and breaking down on tile floors,
like little parts breaking off of a satellite.
.
When I was young I jumped onto the train of
itching every second to complain and run,
because a mentality of "woe is me"
is easier than to accept the flaws I have as human.
I was told that the only way to be mature was to embrace cynicism, 1075Please respect copyright.PENANAQ4uer64j25
That only the young still have dreams in their heart
That it is worse to fail than never to start.
So I wore my depression like a badge of honor,
my insomnia and antisocial tendencies as some sort of marker
That I was living in the real world.
.
But the real world,
the real world is beautiful
and real people are marvelous, 1075Please respect copyright.PENANAgiZAFJoWMJ
And the more I grow, feelings ebb and flow
Like colors of the sunshine on the snow
and the way a river flows with a certain serene calmness
And I finally have something akin to calmness
in that aching thoracic cavity that I allowed to be empty
for so long.
.
I used to feel so old, so on top of things
convinced I was better than others because I possessed
a certain degree of suffering within my chest
But I know now that it was an adolescent ruse, 1075Please respect copyright.PENANA3hdQqinQYk
a narcissistic choice to choose.1075Please respect copyright.PENANA9Ngrs2WO87
I would rather be dumb than cynical 1075Please respect copyright.PENANAkRwjRciBg3
and I would rather be young than antisocial1075Please respect copyright.PENANAcaX3ZnBecj
and I would rather be full and happy 1075Please respect copyright.PENANAmQKUtRKH9g
than anything else in the world. 1075Please respect copyright.PENANA872pMwa5Vf
.1075Please respect copyright.PENANAkkaPygZIwj
So yes, talk to me. I'll take my earbuds out.1075Please respect copyright.PENANA131qHceTcL
Call me on the phone, let me hear your voice.1075Please respect copyright.PENANAklfJ9P2qyM
Tell me about the new diet you're on, I'm proud of you.1075Please respect copyright.PENANAY7I0RpeLKW
Tell me about the tears that fell from your eyes 1075Please respect copyright.PENANA0wP83HrMA2
at the new soap episode last night.1075Please respect copyright.PENANAGrVZ4gcRsp
Show me the pictures of your kids, 1075Please respect copyright.PENANAQ0WV6ORmnC
they're just growing up so fast, god, aren't we all?1075Please respect copyright.PENANA5LEOPtIeZT
Paint me a picture with your words
Against the backdrop of the real world, this is the real world
and oh my god, I'm listening,1075Please respect copyright.PENANAalLoJfHbFA
I've be waiting my entire life to just listen.
.
I remind myself, on the haughty days
Where I believe that pain is knowledge
and the world is ugly, and that we are all sheep,
I start to feel the cynicism creep back in around the edges
of my eyes, disguise reality for a picture of darkness,
I remember the way that my mom smiles
when she is standing by the ocean, 1075Please respect copyright.PENANAG3HspNKGFC
and the sun is bearing down against waves bearing upon the shore,
and there is no one but the two of us,
nothing but that moment.
How could I tell her that her smiles are wrong?
How could anything so beautiful be wrong?
When I feel my mental disorders trying to tell me
that the world is ugly, I can remember the way it felt 1075Please respect copyright.PENANA2lyEycdajx
to lay on the wet grass of my backyard in a hot summer rain, 1075Please respect copyright.PENANAsHDhdsKe0a
holding his hand and yelling glee into the skies
feeling everything at once as though the emptiness couldn't get me anymore
The emptiness can't get me anymore.
How could I remember anything else?
.
So how could I think of a wrong way to rejoice in the world?1075Please respect copyright.PENANA1prgIHF8m8
How could I take glee as naivete, or happiness as being dull,
There is nothing intelligent about looking into the face of a laughing child
and feeling anything but warmth.
When I took my first steps, people clapped for me.
Why do we ever stop celebrating the little things?
.
It is not a sin to be excited about the real world1075Please respect copyright.PENANAyuaCZO2hvU
Because we as people are small,
and with all of the technology we have, we are still so small.
And when the screens go out we only have as much as we place in each other.1075Please respect copyright.PENANArXWh2dsgeo
It is so easy to feel large, but on foot the world is full of crannies and nooks
so much larger than anything we've ever seen
I thought I'd seen everything, but then I saw the sunset from a different angle,
and everything changed.
How could I ever want to die without seeing that sunset again?
It made me feel so small.
And we are all so small.1075Please respect copyright.PENANA52C1lYyRIt
But that does not mean that we are insignificant.
Because the real world?1075Please respect copyright.PENANA7zjtGdC6ki
The real world is extraordinary.
And the people in the real world,
are the most god damn beautiful thing I've ever seen.
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