Seventeen and Insane

Seventeen and Insane
What kind of person should be labeled as ‘insane’? A girl who stays up all night walking around aimlessly? A woman who is addicted to television? A person who befriends strangers on the street, or a person who subconsciously overdoses on sleeping pills? Is it the person who behaves with the least logic, or the person who behaves least like acceptable society?
Mildred and Clarisse of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 are two such people. Mildred is married to Montag, the story’s protagonist, and is a typical member of acceptable society. She constantly listens to her Seashell radio, a nonstop broadcast from a piece that fits comfortably into her ear, and considers the characters on her wall-size television to be her family. Clarisse is nearly the opposite. She does not fit in with others at all. Clarisse doesn’t watching TV or listening to the radio, at least not as much as she enjoys going on walks, observing nature, and talking to people – all very peculiar to the people in the world that Ray Bradbury has placed her in. When she meets Montag, she claims to be, “seventeen and insane.” But is she really? To decide, it would make sense to compare her to an accepted person of society – such as Mildred.
Mildred, as what is considered to be a normal part of society, avoids learning and most forms of knowledge. She is almost ignorant, and intentionally so. If the new knowledge is different from something she already believes, or might complicate her life in the slightest, she denies it completely. Mildred never questions anything. Clarisse, on the other hand, questions nearly everything, and enjoys knowing different pieces of information and learning them. These traits are displayed in her various conversations with Montag, in which she both displays knowledge about how the city used to be and asks questions about Montag. In addition to asking questions, Clarisse learns things through observation and contemplation. One example is her thought process on the speed people go when driving.
In addition to new knowledge, Mildred doesn’t really like new anything. This is implied by her contentment to do the same things repeatedly, but also by her reaction to her husband’s books. She has a routine and a comfort zone, and she doesn’t want it disturbed. Clarisse loves to try things. She tries everything, “once, sometimes twice.” To her, everything is something to be discovered, experienced, and understood. Montag witnessed her trying a variety of things, from shaking trees, to knitting a sweater, to leaving flowers on porches.
Another trait Mildred has is that she is very isolated. This isn’t to say that she doesn’t like people, or doesn’t have any friends, because she does. However, she doesn’t feel compelled to get to know very much about them. Mildred, like everyone else, dislikes conflict, which is easy to come by when people express different opinions. So in addition to keeping any opinions that they might have to themselves, people don’t seek to know the opinions of others. Instead, Mildred sticks to her wall-sized TVs, or parlor walls, which are far less antagonizing than the inner workings of other people. In contrast, Clarisse is very, maybe even overly, friendly. Much of her curiosity is aimed towards people, or other living things, such as nature. It is possible that she doesn’t like other people all that well, since many people regard her as a freak and most likely treat her very poorly, but she is still interesting in knowing people and all about them.
Mildred is regarded as the normal, sane person of society. However, she is not happy. This conclusion is easily drawn from her potential suicide and the descriptions of her lifelessness. Clarisse is seen by most people as an oddity, but she doesn’t seem to really mind this. In fact, she seems to be perfectly content with her unconventional habits. So who here is really insane? More importantly, does it matter?

Essay - Worse Than Starving

“I’m sick of living in a world that’s taught my friends to hate themselves (PostSecret).”
“I’m waiting for a real magazine. The day there are headlines like, ‘It’s ok not to have sex with strangers,’ or, ‘Being chubby is ok,’ I’ll subscribe (PostSecret).”
“Beautiful women make me want to kill myself (PostSecret).”
These statements may seem melodramatic or sensational, but they are just a few real feelings expressed anonymously by real girls. One additional anonymous message was written over a blurred photograph of a girl and a mirror. It read, “Because the mirror hurts worse than starving (PostSecret).” Does it really? More accurately, I believe it could be said that the media hurts worse than starving. The media, including video games, movies, television shows, song lyrics, advertisements, and magazines, makes it difficult to accept that women of various shapes can be, and are, beautiful. Every day, young girls are bombarded by the media’s messages telling them how to look, act, and dress, and what they can expect in return. What the girls aren’t told is that not only are these messages untrue, but that they are actually dangerous.
Models are called such for a reason: They are meant to be the perfect example of what they are representing, not to mention the ideal that others are meant to build from. However, they are modeling in another way as well. Like a sculptor might make something from clay or wood, so are their images working with our minds. When women are presented with images of the “ideal” woman, they tend to feel more discontent with their own appearance, a feeling which can easily escalate into such emotions as “depression, shame, guilt, body dissatisfaction, and stress (About-Face).” And is that really any surprise? The average American woman is 5’4” and weighs 140 pounds, but the average American model is 5’11” and weighs 117 pounds (About-Face)! Nearly all models are more slender than 98% of America’s women (About-Face). In fact, many models would technically qualify as anorexic (About-Face). Yet, these are the women that are idolized by women across the nation and globe.
Media affects not only how girls see themselves, which is mostly inadequate, but also how males see them. In many advertisements, songs, video games, and movies, women are presented as objects, mostly sexual tools or attractive decoration. When women are portrayed solely as something to serve a man instead of as a human with an identity and emotions, it’s called objectification, and it’s the first step toward female-directed violence (About-Face). Studies have shown that when men start to think of women as objects more than as people, they are more willing to act out violently towards them (About-Face). The really sad thing is that not only do the men start to believe that it is okay to treat women like this, but because of their belief of their lack of value, women may start to believe that they deserve it, too. This may be because they think that all their value comes from their appearance, which they consider substandard, or it may be because they are so desensitized towards violence portrayed in the media that it has become commonplace in their minds.
In addition, girls may start to see themselves in a less individual way. Once girls are convinced that their personal value comes from their appearance, they are willing to conform to almost any standard to be valued. In the most widely distributed magazine for adolescents, Seventeen Magazine, articles about appearance take up the largest percentage of pages – and this does not even include advertisements (About-Face). When so much emphasis is placed on appearance, is it any wonder that these are the expectations that girls focus on? Media neglects the personal voice, passions, and identities of girls. Girls, consequently, ignore their own individuality in order to earn affection.
When a girl or woman’s individuality is neglected for sexual appeal, it’s called sexualization. Sexualization can also happen if a person is sexually objectified, or if someone is imposed by inappropriate sexuality, such as a young girl being instilled with adult sexuality (“Executive Summary”). When girls are sexualized, they determine how best to dress or behave based on its sexual appeal, even at the early ages of 10 to 12. Tween girls are girls between the ages of 8 and 12, and since the 1990s, sexual content has been increasingly directed towards these girls (“Media, Market ‘Sexualizing’”). According to journalism professor and author of The Lolita Effect, Gigi Durham, “The body ideals presented in the media are virtually impossible to attain, but girls don’t always realize that, and they’ll buy an awful lot of products to try to achieve those bodies” (qtd in “Media, Market ‘Sexualising’”) Females are shown from a young age that their appearance is what determines their “sexiness”, which is what determines how worthy they are of affection.
Furthermore, the media affects more than just the girls’ thoughts of themselves; it warps their perceptions of love, sex, and violence as well. Many unmarried couples on television are considered to be in love, and subsequently, engage in sexual intercourse. As a result of media repeatedly portraying them synonymously, girls may start to confuse sex and love, or mistake them for the same thing. Women may also start to see affection to be the same thing as respect. Much media portrays women who receive excessive amounts of affection to be powerful, and thus worthy of respect. In reality, someone may give affection to anyone; but if you want respect, you have to show that you deserve it. A point that was briefly touched on earlier, violence is often portrayed as an insignificant occurrence. Men are frequently depicted as naturally aggressive beings; Women then assume that violence is a typical part of humanity, and something to be submissively tolerated. The truth is, sex is not the same as love, affection is not the same as respect, and violence is a big deal.
In many songs, music videos, video games, and commercials, violence is portrayed as inconsequential. Some fashion ads even go so far as to include photos of dead women on the sidewalk, a woman’s legs sticking out of car trunks, or women with men holding knives to their throats – hardly funny, considering that three women are killed at the hands of their boyfriend or husband every day (About-Face). Yet many women don’t often see it as a big deal, or even offensive. This may be part of the reason that much violence towards women – a little over half of female-directed assaults – goes unreported (“Violence Against Women”).
This last topic deserved some expanding, because it brings to light a situation which ties together low self-esteem, objectification, violence, and sexualization. While the effect of media violence on boys may increase their violence towards girls, it can also desensitize girls to the severity of the situation. Women may also endure brutality because they may not consider themselves significant enough to bother anyone about it. In addition, objectification is a contributor to abuse inflicted on women who are perceived as an object as opposed to a human, and sexualization habitually act as a secondary form of objectification.
By showing young males “what they’ll get” and showing young females “what they’ll be”, the media has successfully distorted all youths’ view of women. The physical, mental, and emotional damage that this has done to young women is inestimable. How does one measure pain? Just consider the following. In his book Battle Cry For A Generation, Ron Luce informs us that after only a few weeks of viewing mildly sexualized media regularly, men started to show signs of lessened respect or concern for women. The longer they continued to view it, the more tolerant they became of violence and objectification or sexualization of women. Some men even changed their minds about the severity of rape and assault (91-110). In addition, several studies have shown that after just half an hour or less of looking through adolescent magazines, women tend to rank their appearance or value lower than before they viewed the magazines. The studies also discovered that the lower you originally rated yourself, the quicker your self-esteem fell (About-Face). What people need to think about is that if these effects are made visible in just thirty minutes to thirty days, what can it do to a person during an entire lifetime? What really hurts worse…the mirror or the media?


Work Cited
About-Face. 10 Sep. 2008. About-Face. 28 Sep. 2008 .
“Executive Summary” APA Online. 2008. American Psychological Association. 3 Oct.
2008 .
Luce, Ron. Battle Cry For A Generation. Colorado Springs: Nexgen, 2005
“Media, Market ‘Sexualising’ Young Girls For Profit.” AOL India News. 27 Apr. 2008.
AOL Interactive Media India. 3 Oct. 2008
.
PostSecret. 5 Oct. 2008. Ed. Frank Warren. 5 Oct. 2008.
.
“Violence Against Women Goes Unreported” Women In Distress. 18 Apr. 2003. Women
In Distress of Broward County. 3 Oct. 2008
.

Art Therapy for Children Outline

Introduction: Children may have trouble finding the words they need.
Experiences aren’t often verbal.
1. Children may have trouble expressing feelings regarding violence or trauma.
2. Children with autism may have trouble with therapy where speaking is the main medium.
3. Children and adolescents may not be comfortable enough during transition periods to talk about it.
Art therapy is visual as opposed to verbal.
1. Words don’t need to be found.
2. Art is simple and easier for some children to understand.
3. Art therapy is not threatening or intimidating.
Children who have experienced violence or trauma may benefit from art therapy.
Children are not uncommonly affected by violence or trauma.
1. Statistic
2. Statistic
Children affected by violence may be scared of “telling,” and be less frightened by “drawing.”
Children may feel more comfortable “doing stuff” instead of talking about “it.” (Art Therapy, Featured Articles)
Children with autism may benefit from art therapy.
Children with autism usually display symptoms in the first three years of their life, making the use of words even more difficult.
Children with autism have “intense sensory needs.”
Children with autism
Children with low self-esteem or depression may feel empowered by art therapy.
Art therapy can help release suppressed or hidden feelings of depression or low self-esteem.
Art therapy can help diminish these feelings by giving the child a sense of accomplishment.
Conclusion: Art therapy is flexible but complicated form of therapy.
Art therapy comes in many different forms, can treat different things, and helps different people.
It is necessary to be very well-educated in art therapy in order to apply it because there are so many ways for it to be used.

Art Therapy Outline

I. Art therapy is effective for expressing emotion.
A. Art therapy can help reveal subconscious feelings or suppressed emotions.
B. Art therapy can help release emotions that are difficult to express verbally.
II. Art therapy is effective for children.
A. Art therapy is very non-verbal, and children may have trouble finding words to fit their emotions.
B. Art therapy is comfortable for a child.
1. A child may not be comfortable saying what they need to even if they know how.
2. A child may not be comfortable talking to a stranger.
III. Art therapy is effective, in part, because it is not threatening.
A. Art therapy is not as intimidating as another person may be.
B. Art therapy is does not pathologize the person by making the person feel as if their identity is in their problem.
IV. Art therapy is effective, in part, because it is flexible.
A. Art therapy can cover many different art forms.
1. Patients can develop a more personalized form of therapy for themselves.
2. Patients can find a medium that works well for them.
a. Patients will feel more comfortable with choices.
b. Patients will be able to find a medium that may help them feel empowered.
B. Art therapy can have different levels.
1. Art therapy can work on a basic therapeutic level of expressing and sorting emotions.
2. Art therapy can also empower patients if they exhibit or share their artwork.

Poetry - Untitled

"No," my voice is firm somehow.
"no. . ." it is a whimper now.
No! I cannot move my mouth.
Beneath his weight, I start to sink.
I can't move - I can't think
Do I fight? Do I scream?
No, just wait, it's just a dream
Keep your eyes shut and stay still
It's not real, It's not real.
And it's back to reality
As he throws my jeans at me.
Why am I shaking? I'm so scared!
Last thing I knew, I was only laying there!
It was just only a nightmare . . .
I am only a child!
And I'm also in denial.

"Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening"

I don't know whose woods these are,
The ones I've stopped by in my car.
I can't see the shadows beyond the trees,
And I think I'd like to discover these.
And from afar,
I feel a breeze,
So I climb out and leave my car to freeze.

Before long, day turns to night,
And I'm thinking Robert Frost was right
To not have entered the woods,
But I'm not convinced this isn't good.
Judging by the snow,
This is a path where no others go.

I stayed in the woods so long,
And I heard many a sad bird's song,
Was stalked by many a creature,
Thinking, "I should have listened to my teacher,"
Because Robert Frost had known this was wrong.

And - Is that my car alarm? -
But these trees are too full of charm.
So I walk obliviously through and into self-harm,
Not feeling the threat brushing my arm.

But now I know better,
Like to always take a sweater,
And the road not taken
May make you feel forsaken,
And in every stranger
Is a small amount of danger.
Don't think I'm mistaken;
I'm not all that easily shaken,
But it's easy to be taken
By something lovely, dark, and deep,
Where the wild creatures creep.

And as far as I'm concerned,
If there's one thing I learned,
Each lesson is learnable,
Every bridge burnable,
All tables are turnable,
And nothing ever really gets returned.

Also,
Bad things can be exciting,
And though exciting can be nice,
Nice and bad aren't the same.
But depending on the lighting,
And on the price,
And on the game,
And on how well you play,
Nice and good could also be two different ways.

Poetry - A (Not-So-)Short Poem

If you were as small as me
You’d see why each short height joke has me
Rolling my eyes and acting disaffective.
But either you’re just blind,
Or out of your mind,
Or it requires a more down-to-earth perspective.

Fewer things go over my head than you realize.
But if one of the few
That actually do
Is your line of vision,
Maybe you’d better get a new set of eyes;
I wasn’t responsible for that collision,
Seeing as the only one moving was you.

Aside from your jokes,
Being short is better than being tall.
I don’t trip over other folks,
And if I did, I’d have a shorter distance to fall.
I’m the human version
Of fun-size bars of candy.
I’m the perfect size for travel,
See – being small can come in handy.

Small bits of music make a medley,
And microscopic germs can be deadly.
Dynamite comes in little bundles,
But its effect can be huge.
Diamonds are among the most beautiful,
Although some eyes
Might consider their size
To be a subterfuge.

Don’t make fun of my height for frivolity
You may have more quantity,
But what matters most is quality

A Story Written by a Music Box

I should tell you right now that I don’t know everything, and that I don’t intend to make up what I don’t know. So don’t expect me to fill in the blanks with best guesses and probabilities. You should know that I’m only here to report the facts, and not even all of the facts. There were probably facts before this and there will most likely be facts after this, but I don’t know what they are. If you don’t like it, then you can put me down right now and go find yourself some lovely little story that makes perfect sense. As for this one, you can’t expect me to explain everything, since it’s being written by an uninformed music box at best.

The first time I saw Harmony was the first time I had seen anyone for a long time. She didn’t seem too interested in me, since she sat the box back down without even glancing at me, and before the song had even ended. I suppose she had other things to see to. I did get a good look at her over the next couple of hours, though. She had fair skin and her copper curls had a habit of getting in her way. At that point in time, and every time I saw her afterwards, she had a calculated desperation about her movements. Everything she did was evenly paced, but impatient and jerky.

Before she left, she had removed all the books from the tall book case, flipped through all their pages, rummaged through and emptied one of the dressers, and searched two cardboard boxes quite thoroughly. Swan Lake was long done playing by the time she crawled back out the window, and a good thing, too, because it was starting to annoy me. Something must have happened to the mechanism over the years, because there was a part of the song where the notes would barely scratch through.

Once she was gone, I spent my time studying my whereabouts instead of her. It’d been a long time since I’d seen anything other than a bedroom, although I don’t think my surroundings could be considered an improvement. The roof was peaked and beamed, and the walls were less than cared for. These observations, in addition to the lack of any door other than one near the center of the floor, lead me to the conclusion that I had run my course and that the rest of my days were to be attic-spent. It seemed odd to me that the attic had not been split up into rooms or given proper walls, but still had windows. It clearly was not designed for anything other than storage, but there the windows were. Whether the architect was a moron or the construction workers were slackers, I guess it worked out well for Harmony.

It was only a couple of days before she came back. Harmony’s rhythmic ransacking of the room continued without hesitation. She went straight from the window to a stack of crates against the wall and patiently started emptying and refilling them. After that, another dresser and half a vanity were explored. The intruder didn’t leave until her eyes watered from yawning.

The next night was her longest. She didn’t leave or even slow down until sunlight started to leak in, and when she left, there wasn’t a drawer in the room that hadn’t been vacated and inspected. Her frustration seemed to be increasing.

Her raid became less methodic after that. Previously, the older boxes and antique trunks had been left ignored, but now she was fumbling through their contents as well. Drawers were pulled out a second time so that she could look behind and below them. She even looked inside an old piano in the corner, which was probably a mistake on her part.

I couldn’t see what happened exactly, being on the other side of the room. The best I can figure is that she slipped while leaning into the instrument and hit several chords, because there was a tumultuous racket that sounded uncannily like someone falling into an out-of-tune piano.

She didn’t move for several moments. Her eyes were wide and I’m not sure she was even breathing. There was a sound downstairs, and she bolted for the window. A few seconds later, the door in the floor opened downwards and the ladder unfolded, creaking with annoyance. Some people might have thought the creaking would be from age or lack of use, but I know better. Nothing likes to be stepped on in the middle of the night.

It was fortunate for the man that came upstairs that there was no danger in the room, because I honestly don’t think he was awake enough to be able to handle anything other than an empty room. Honestly, he didn’t even handle the empty room with any impressive amount of intelligence. The missing drawers and empty bookshelves seemed to completely escape his notice. Harmony probably could have just stayed half in and half out of the piano and been just fine.

The man went back downstairs without even looking at the piano, but Harmony stayed away for about a week. Without Harmony to amuse me, the attic was growing increasingly boring. It wasn’t like some attics that I’ve seen since, where restless children will play dress-up or angst-filled teenagers will write poetry on the walls. It was an attic in the most useless sense of the word, a place where things went when no one wanted to bother with them anymore. I didn’t like being there.

Harmony did come back eventually. Everything she did was done with increased speed, and most of these things didn’t seem to make sense to me. Under and between the cushions of a chair, inside pockets of old clothes, between the folds of rolled-up rugs – nothing was left alone. Even I couldn’t think of anything left to look at, and so I figured that it was going to be the last of her visits.

She surprised me the next night by bringing a companion with her, a male with sand-colored hair and a relaxed demeanor.

“Where haven’t you looked?” he asked in a hushed voice once they were both in the room. He put inhaled his cigarette one more time before tossing it out the window.

“Behind the furniture that’s against the walls. That’s why you had to come, because I can’t move them on my own without making too much noise.”
“What if nothing’s there?”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to look through everything again. Help move this, please, Sean,” she whispered as she grabbed one end of a large dresser. He moved to the other end and together they heaved it a few inches off the ground and a few feet forward. The only sounds were some loud creaks and a light thud when they set the dresser back down.

They did the same to every piece of furniture around the room. At one point, Sean stepped back slightly, knocking over a couple of cans and the box that I was sitting on. The room spun and flashed in and out of complete darkness as the lid bounced open and shut, and finally landed half-open several feet away. Harmony and Sean didn’t move. The tension was nearly visible as they strained to hear any sign of movement over the sound of the distorted Swan Lake that was plinking its way through the room. The song ended and the vanity was set down without any consequences appearing.

“I’m sorry,” Sean whispered.

Harmony picked up the box up and the room was set to rights again. “It’s okay. No one woke up. I only wish you hadn’t made me listen to that poor music box again. Something’s wrong with it, and the music messes up at parts.”

“Here, let me see it.”

“We need to finish moving the furniture,” Harmony protested, although she didn’t do much to keep Sean from taking the box from her and turning me upside-down again. She probably wanted to be able to hear the song play all the way through without wincing almost as badly as I did.

I didn’t get to see much of what happened next, because all I could see was Sean’s upside-down shirt, but I suppose something good happened, because I heard was Sean saying, “Hey!” in a victorious voice, and Harmony’s excited, restrained laugh. The world turned right-side-up again, although at this point I was wondering how long it would be until it spun around again, and then everything was dark. That didn’t last long. When I saw Sean and Harmony again, Swan Lake was playing as smoothly as it ever had, and Harmony was putting something in her pocket. I can only assume that it had something to do with what had confused the mechanism so badly.

Apparently their job was accomplished, although they hadn’t moved all the furniture, because Sean handed me back to Harmony and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “I can’t believe you never looked in that music box,” he teased as he lit a cigarette and started smoking it.

“The music box was one of the first places I looked; I just didn’t think to look in the music part instead of just the box.”

Sean laughed quietly and glanced at me. “Well, if those screwed up notes hadn’t bothered me so much when we knocked it over, I wouldn’t have looked there, either.”

Harmony set me down on a chair near the window. “Well, you’re just quiet the mechanical genius,” she said, “but I think we should go.”

“Probably,” he agreed, flicking his barely-used cigarette to the ground. I wondered briefly at him, since most smokers couldn’t seem to get enough nicotine, why he so flippantly left so much unused, but I didn’t get to wonder long. Seconds later, the room was lit up in an eerie, flickering glow. The cans that Sean had knocked over earlier had cracked and spilled, and his cigarette had landed in whatever was in them, and now it was on fire.

Harmony cried out in alarm, her eyes and mouth turning into perfect little Os of surprise. Sean swore and started to try stomping the flames out before Harmony grabbed him by the arm and started dragging him away towards the window. “We have to go,” she hissed, pushing him out.

He resisted just long enough to make a protest that he wasn’t about to act on. “Harmony, the house is on fire.”

“So get out of it!” she insisted. He didn’t argue again. He climbed through the window, and she after him. I was just pondering the fate of being melted so soon after being able to accurately play Swan Lake when Harmony reached in, shut the box, and lifted me off the chair.

“What are you doing?” I heard Sean ask in a panic.

“I like Swan Lake!” came her defensive reply.

“Well, you know, the house is burning down, and we could be arrested for breaking, entering, and arson, so I guess adding theft to the list isn’t really a big deal, since you like Swan Lake,” he replied sarcastically.

“Fine,” she huffed. She dropped me and I fell to the grass, lid half-open, and Swan Lake plinking pathetically into the night. “We have what we need, so let’s just go.” That was the last that I ever heard of Harmony. Like her and Sean, I had what I needed, which was to be out of a burning attic, so I personally didn’t have a problem with not knowing where they went or what they did. And you shouldn’t either, because I don’t have anything else to tell you about the situation. I told you earlier that I was only here to report the facts, and that I wasn’t going to make up what I didn’t know. You were warned. Now, if you please, put me back down and go find yourself some story that makes sense. You know the kind – the ones that aren’t written by music boxes.

Poetry - No

I've already told you,
Why won't you listen?
I just want to hold you,
But you shouldn't let me.
You're going to regret it,
Regret it if you get me.

Poetry - untitled

Who would believe that a girl this small
Could destroy so much?
Who'd believe that every good thing she finds
Collapses at her touch?

It isn't what she means to do -
She wishes it weren't that way.
She's only ever wanted to help,
To make herself of some use,
But her efforts are more pointless every day.

She's caused more destruction
Than she cares to bear.
She's tired of dealing with failure
And sick of living in despair.

She's the source of the misery
And the reason for the loss.
The only way to do any good
Is to force herself to stop.
She knows she really should
Kill the monster that's the cause.

So if it's really what you want,
You can stick around
To watch her drive herself into the ground,
To see her tear herself apart
Starting at the arms and working toward the heart.

Poetry - untitled

So there's good news:
This isn't as hard as I thought it would be.
It turns out that forgetting about
Is relatively easy.

In fact, I rather like the feeling
Of lips swollen from kissing
Someone who doesn't leave a bitter taste in my thoughts
And giving to someone
Who might actually appreciate what they got.

And it just so happens
That I might deserve it.
You had me convinced
When you decided I was worthless.
But it turns out you were wrong.
I'm not the kind of girl
That has to look for too long
To find other arms to crawl into,
If she should so choose to.

And the arms I've found,
I like them - a lot better than yours.
So I think I'll stick around
And see what else is better than it was before.

Poetry - Here

I'm waking up early
And thinking of you in your bed.
I know the door is unlocked
And the way is clear,
But I pull my covers over my head,
Because it's safer here.

Here, where a girl can cry
With no fear of anger,
And might make herself comfortable
And not be in danger.
Where a girl doesn't have to think
About the mess
Or worry about the nervous
Exposure of flesh.

Here, where a girl can close her eyes,
Where a girl can imagine you by her side
Like you used to be.
Here, where a girl isn't touched
Except in her sleep.

Here, where no one else has to bother
With a girl's shaking or tears,
Where a pillow must suffice,
Where company is limited to mirrors.
Here, where there's no one to care
Or even take notice of nightmares.

Here, where a girl has to cope
With her own problems,
Where a girl has to use all of her hope
Just to get through the night,
Where she can try to convince herself
That she's happy
Even if she isn't quite.

So I hate the snooze button
And try not to think about what you said.
I want someone to make it true,
To come and be here with me,
But I force myself to sleep instead,
And hope that the security
Is worth the misery.