Kids Like Me Aren't All Right

When I Was A Kid

I'm trying something new y'all.... Let's see how this works.....

When I was a kid, I was told I would have a family one day. I was ignorant to what I would endure before then. When I was a kid I would sit up at night and look at the stars, making my own constellations as the moonlight streamed in through my window. When I was a kid I could play with nothing but what I had imagined. Bikes became horses, my Nana's woods became filled with fairies and other magical creatures that I would run around with all day, the sun was actually a phoenix and the moon held a man, the playground was a pirate ship, a castle, a house, an escape.

When I was a kid I was bullied for the first time, I was only seven. Some kid next to me in the lunch line said that the dark hair on my arms made me look like a monster. That's where it all started. To tell that to a seven year old, well, you might as well have burned my arms until they were scarred and ugly, oh how I hated them. I could never not see them and it drove me mad. A week later I pushed that kid off the monkey bars and he scraped up his hands and knees.

When I was a kid I  was accused of trying on another students shoes during break by my second grade sub when I was eight. I had just said they were pretty, I never even touched them. I was labelled a liar. When I was a kid I hit the kids I didn't like. They called me fat and ugly and pulled my hair during lessons when the teacher wasn't looking. I was nine.

When I was a kid I was an ugly, fat, lying monster. The scars were everywhere now. When I was a Kid I traded the truth for an easy way out. I let people copy notes in return for friendship and I gave everyone who let me down a late pass. I was 10. Then things shifted. I moved and I was fine, until I wasn't. I wanted to die and all because I was told by others that I wasn't good enough. I tried to commit suicide. No one even noticed because I still smiled. They were all fake. I was twelve, barely even grown. So I lashed out. I covered the bathroom wall in purple sharpie because I got to take out my anger on something bigger than a person. Then I was thirteen and everything was different. I had found someone and they gave me light and it reminded me so much of those cloudless nights staring at the sky. I found a way to make more constellations even in the brightest of rooms. Their eyes are so deep that I thought I would find myself being consumed by there darkness one day, but until then I focused on the stars that shown through, for I found a new way to make my constellations and I found a way to make night apparent in the day even though I wanted to set my clock according to moonlight.

I couldn't though, I was always tired because fatigue does to men what a goodnight kiss does to kids and I was fourteen. Barely even realizing I was a man on the inside, but my eyelids still drooped shut. Sometimes I think that kid is gone, but then I'm suddenly distracted from the world and I'm free falling endlessly. Then I crash. I'm sixteen. I'm no longer a kid, I've hid that kid away inside my heart where he won't get hurt. But when that kid does get hurt, I stop. I dust him off and kiss it better because I'm gonna need that kid if I'm gonna survive any longer.

Wow..... 646 words later and I think I've just given a vague description of how when and where my depression started and the stupid shit that's in my head..... This was really something new for me to write, but I would love feedback! Thanks so much for reading and with that, read on mortals.