To This Day- Shane Koyczan
When i was a kid i used to think pork chops and karate chops were the same thing i thought they were both pork chops and because my grandmother thought it was cute and because they were my favorite she let me keep doing it not really a big deal one day before i realized fat kids arent designed to climb trees i fell out of a tree and bruised the right side of my body, i didnt want to tell my grandmother about because i was scared id get in trouble for playing somewhere i shouldnt have been. a few days later my gym teacher noticed the bruised and sent me to the principals office from there i was sent another small room with a really nice lady who asked me all kinds of questions about my life at home i saw no realson to lie as far as i was concerned life was pretty good i told her whenever im sad my grandmother gives me karate chops this lead to a full scale investigations and i was removed from the house for 3 days till they finally decided to ask how i got the bruises news of this silly little story quickly spread through the school and i earned my first nickname pork chop To This Day i hate pork chops im not the only kid whop grew up this way, surounded by people who used to say that rhyme about sticks and stones as if broken bones hurt more than the names we got called and we got called them all so we grew up beleiving no one would ever fall in love with us that wed be lonely forever, that wed never meet someone whod make us feel like the sun was something they built for us in their tool shed so broken heart strings bled the blues as we tried to empty ourselves so we'd feel nothing dont tell me that hurts less than a broken bone that an ingrown life is something surgens can cut away that theres no way for it to metastisize, it does.
she was 8 years old, our first day of grade 3 when she got called ugly. we both got moved to the back of the class so we would stop being bombarded by spit balls. but the school halls were a battle ground we found ourselves outnumbered day after reached day, we used to stay inside for reccess because outside was worse outside we had to reherse running away or learn to stand still like statues giving no clues that we were there and in grade 5 they taped a sign to the front of her dest that said "beware of dog" To This Day despite a loving husband she doesnt think shes beautiful because of a birth mark that takes up a little less than half her face kids used to say that she looked like a wrong answer that someone tried to earase but couldnt quite get the job done and theyll never understand that shes raising two kids whose deffinition of beauty begins with the word MOM because they see her heart before they see her skin because shes only ever always been amazing.
He was a broken branch grafted on to a different family tree. adopted. not because his parents opted for a different destiny. he was 3 when he became a mixed drink of 1 part left alone and 2 parts tragedy. started therapy in 8th grade, had a personality made up of tests and pills, lived like the up hills were mountains and the down hills were cliffs 4/5 suicidal. a tidal wave of anti deppresants.and an adalesence being call popper. 1 part because of the pills, 99 parts because of the cruelty. he tried to kill himself in grade 10 and a kid that could still go home to mom and dad still had the awdasity to tell him, get over it. as if depression could be remidied by any of the contents found in a first aid kit. to this day he is a stick of tnt lit from both ends, could describe in detail how the sky bends and the moment its about to fall. and despite an army of freiends who all call him an ainsperation, he remains a coversation peice between people who cant understand. sometimes being drug free has less to do with addiction and more to do with sanity.
we werent the only kids who grew up this way, to this day kids are still being called names. the classics were hey stupid, hey spazz. seems like every school has an arsinal of names thats getting updated every year. and if a kid in the school breaks and no around chooses to hear it, do they make a sound? are they just backround noise to a sound track stuck on repeat and people say things like kids can be cruel. every school was a big top circus tentand the pecking order went from acrobats to lion tamers from clowns to carnies all of these were miles ahead of who we were we were freaks lobster claw boys and bearded ladies oddities juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal but at night while the others slept we kept walking the tightrope it was practice and yeah some of us fell but I want to tell them that all of this shit is just debris leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought we used to be and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself get a better mirror look a little closer stare a little longer because there’s something inside you that made you keep trying despite everyone who told you to quit you built a cast around your broken heart and signed it yourself you signed it “they were wrong” because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a click maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth to show and tell but never told because how can you hold your ground if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it you have to believe that they were wrong they have to be wrong why else would we still be here? we grew up learning to cheer on the underdog because we see ourselves in them we stem from a root planted in the belief that we are not what we were called we are not abandoned cars stalled out and sitting empty on a highway and if in some way we are don’t worry we only got out to walk and get gas we are graduating members from the class of fuck off we made it not the faded echoes of voices crying out names will never hurt me of course they did but our lives will only ever always continue to be a balancing act that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty.
