No More Hiding

Different.

Since the beginning,

I've been different,

With my tallness and shortness,

Laces that never matched,

Lollipops of grape,

And bucktoothed smiles that were always a bit more cheesy than everyone else's,

Which is funny because I used to not like cheese,

Which is odd because I could never see what was so funny about it, what was so goofy about it,

And goofy was always my favorite cartoon character because I could relate to how everyone laughed at him,

Like how everyone laughed at me,

Which I guess made me odd.

Made me different,

With my phrases that were never really phrases, more just jumbled up words in my mind that I tried to push through that small keyhole I rarely opened called a mouth,

And everything just got dented and bruised in the process,

All my words not in order,

The phrase that was never really a phrase;

"Don't hate the player, hate the game,"

Became a Frankenstein creation of,

"The player is w-who should be hated because he plays the game and the game is only a game and I think-"

And like white lace, if I pulled too hard, I could rip it, which I often did.

And like ribbon, if I tied and untied it over and over and over again, the edges would fray and fall apart, which they often did.

For I was never careful, never considerate, never organized but somehow always over thinking,

Always just a jumbled mess of sketchbook colorings and broken crayons, but never yellow.

I hated yellow.

And while other kids made their suns in the corner of their papers with that color,

I made mine front and center, a beautiful orange and green,

And you know what?

Blue.

Because why the hell not.

Always a jumbled mess of silence, but a loud silence where I played conversations in my head, and read to myself at night,

And was completely fine with it until everyone made me question it in older grades.

Where I noticed how different I was,

And so I tucked me, myself, and I, into a dark, secluded corner,

Dusty,

For years.

Until eventually,

After years of convincing and hard work and tears and attempts at self love,

I began to slowly dip myself into sunlight again, into the pool of:

It's okay to be different.

-D.