Hello, Poetry People. Today, I went for brevity and wrote a Haiku for my April PAD Challenge/NaPoWriMo poem.
The April PAD Challenge prompt asked participants to write a Not Blank poem. I gave my Haiku the title Not In the Mainstream.
The NaPoWriMo prompt suggests that participants create a poem inspired by a piece of music. For my own part, I chose a timeless classic: the music of nature in the form of the sound of falling rain.
It's not mainstream pop, to be sure. The unspoken portion of the poem is the fact that it's being written by someone who will never be in the mainstream.
I've learned something about myself that doesn't surprise me in the least. In fact, it explains a lot about my hypersensitivity and how frazzled I feel when my routine is disrupted. It also reinforces my anger and sadness over the way I've been treated like I'm a bad person and/or weak for something that's part of my neurological makeup. I will spend the rest of my life trying to learn not to hate myself and to try and get along in a world that hates people like me.
Nobody is going to try to understand people like me. I'm used to that. It would be nice, however, if medical professionals were taught to treat all their patients with common decency rather than disdain, even the "difficult" ones.
I'm not trying to be difficult. It's not like I intentionally decided to have this shit show of a body. Who the hell would choose that? The truth is, I'm fucking terrified of you. I don't want to be here. I can smell the disdain coming off you. You don't try to hide it at all.
To condense all that, the unspoken message in the Haiku is this:
Working through this shit show of a body and this weirdly wired brain is a soul who loves the sound of rain, just wishes everyone could be happy and live peacefully, and will never be part of the mainstream in any way. I don't want pills, injections, and surgery to force my disobedient body to look like what you have deemed it should look like. (I swear to whatever gods there may be if I type "whould" one more time, I'm gonna cut off my fingers!)
I don't want pills or shock therapy or surgery to rearrange my brain till I fit into your definition of sane.
I don't want injections or surgeries or other expensive treatments in a desperate attempt to make myself look younger or closer to what you deem attractive.
It shouldn't matter if I don't conform to your idea of what the perfect woman looks like or acts like. You should treat me with respect and kindness all the same. You have no idea what I've been through or what it's like to be me.
I'll probably go back to being stoic tomorrow. Today, I felt like this needed to be said. I'm sure all five or six people who read this blog really give a shit anyway.
This was the first day in many months that I woke up without feeling like I was on the verge of a panic attack. Learning what I did recently makes certain things finally make sense.
~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~
I could literally listen to this sort of thing all day.
