This chapter highlights truths I am currently focusing on. The title is also a lyric in "meet me in the woods." Also I decided to move all my writings to this book.
Value in the unseen
Art is valuable even when it goes unnoticed and unseen.
A poem written in the early morning only to be thrown out moments later is possibly more important than the one written to be printed in a book, like my own.
Because art made for the sake of making it will always shine brighter in my heart than art made for any other reason.
The darkness got a hold on me
When an individual experiences the unearthing grips of trauma, the mind acts in strange ways.
One may fall into escape, become a closed door, or have false perceptions of reality.
These false perceptions are so common they are almost expected.
Hallucinations happen to traumatized individuals at a rate far higher than those not.
I know this, this information is spreading rapidly in the world around me,
Yet I wonder if I were truly open, people wouldn't believe my history.
Part of me believes that if I were to tell anyone what my eyes see that others don't, suddenly my past would become unbelievable.
I won't know until I do
I often wonder how I will feel when looking back on my poems.
Maybe I will be surprised, ashamed, or delighted.
I hope that I'll look back as I have once before, surprised as to how quickly things can change, and how easily the darkest nights end with a sunrise.
I may look back and be ashamed of my hyperboles and repetitive metaphors, but I hope I can give my past self more love than this.
But at my deepest level I hope to look back delighted at what my writing has grown into.
I can feel it in my bones
I have not known a life without my trauma,
It's existence is woven into my spirit in ways I may never understand.
I can feel the stories written on my bones and craved behind my eyelids.
This will always be my childhood, and my teen years, there is not a time when it will not be there.
This doesn't mean I cannot separate myself from these experiences,
But I cannot separate myself from a life without them.
The secrets we wear
The thing about secrets is they are almost never kept well.
Because what we don't say we wear,
We wear what we keep behind our eyes,
We wear it like a coat in the middle of summer.
It's visible to almost any naked eye.