stay with me / and I'll have it made

I don't like writing poetry any more. I feel like an imposter. I used to write poetry (horrible, when I look back on it) with as much difficulty as it took me to breathe. I was enthusiastic and angsty and feeling entirely new emotions; a precocious girl who always carried around my pen and my notebook. It wasn't a status issue -- I didn't make a statement about the fact that I wrote; more so that it was an easy release for me.

My most recent volume was started in 1999, with the last entry penned just before I graduated in 2001. There are poems about Adam, about my family, about dealing with OCD. The most recent one was getting somewhere, but I never finished

dirt and shale
slam my face.
My wheels turn slowly;
why is this journey an uphill
battle?

a ring I'll never wear
and friends I will never see
again.
Glass starts falling all around me.
New beginnings shrouded by even
the best intentions.

I didn't ask for all this, you know.
Twisted by balance, I am chained
and beaten by perfection
my illustrious mountain.

My arms start to shake as the giant
shudders. Time counts down.

I never meant to face this alone.
I never meant to tell you
how scared I was.

The giant awakes.

And that's saying NOTHING about the songs that I tried to write - "Oh baby, we can love again, yeah darling, a broken heart can mend". Huh. Doesn't say much for being fourteen and in love, does it?

Sometimes I wish that I could recapture things - my poetry and painting and acting and soccer ... what happened to it all? I've become an academic monster. The rest of my life can't keep going like this, can it? I don't think I've ever looked so forward to anything as I do my future right now. One more day of classes, one more week of incredibly hard work, and I'm done. No poetry could be expressive enough to describe what that means to me -- not even the words of my very angsty grade 8 self.