literature

five things they don't teach you in highschool

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Published: Mar 2, 2015

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Literature Text

1.
it's okay to fall in love.
i mean, they tell you you're never going
to marry your high school sweetheart and i'm not going
to tell you it's a lie
because it's not. you guys will probably
break up and it's gonna hurt like hell
but you'll be okay. remember, you are not the only one
who has felt loneliness like a knife,
the only one to know the pain of lungs collapsing
because they were your air,
and you will never be the only one who whispered
"i love you" two lives too soon.

you will not be the last one to have tucked
hair behind their ear and leaned in for a kiss
or the last one to wake up reaching for a hand that's no longer there.

but it's okay.

2.
your favorite book will not always be your favorite.
like you, it will change over time
to something unrecognizable
that gives you only a vague nostalgia in the tips of your fingers.
flipping through the pages will never
feel the same again.

you will learn to love something new;
your next favorite will teach you something about yourself
you couldn't have found on your own.

that's what books are supposed to do.

3.
just because what you love to do isn't a career path
doesn't mean you shouldn't pursue it.
get home from work and drop your bags to the floor
and take canvas, shred it from white to gold
to black
to blue
and back over again
because this is what is inside of you.
you cannot stop passion,
it is impossible, the impossibility of pure humanity
and you have to let it out somehow.

it is who you are, and that's okay.
don't let it slip away.

4.
remember who you are -
but more certainly, who you are not.
you will not forever be a seventeen-year-old
with aspirations to be a physicist
or a doctor
just like you never retained that seven-year-old
vigor to become a circusmaster.

children understand that they have room to grow,
but now you're grown and you think -
this is it. i don't get a second chance, i have to decide now
and i'm just going to tell you right here
that that isn't the case, my friend.
those shoes you are trying to fill will always be three sizes to big,
but that's okay because that cat you had when you were five
gave you the rest of its nine lives
because it could see you'd need all the help you could get
to fight your way to the top.

you are never going to get to stop trying
and there will always be something at which you need to succeed.
but you have to remember that
sometimes the only way over a problem is to retrace your steps.

it's always better to find your way eventually
than to never find it at all;
and no matter what, it's going to be okay.

5.
it sucks, i know, but you have to forgive.
never forget - the people who have nearly clawed your eyes
out with words and meaningless mumbles
have made you who you are today.
shoving them from your mind will succeed in only
tearing you further apart, and nobody wants that.
i promise.

you can't let the shadows of non-saviors
be there to stop you from saving yourself; you can't let them win.
remember what they have done but let it past you,
be the rock in a river
or whatever metaphor you need to pull yourself through this mess
(because god knows, everyone needs something).

you are stronger than you think,
you have more power in your hands than they have in every word
in spoken tongue, and you need to use it.
pull yourself up and over them
and know that that is enough.

the answer will never be to lie down and take a hit;
sometimes you have to hit back. humans don't always learn the first time around, and that's fine,
it is, because that's what humanity is -
and that's okay.