Out of the Shadows
All that time spent on the outside,
Watching without joining in.
I never knew how much I was missing,
I didn't know how blind I'd been.
I didn't think friends were important,
After all, I had other things to do.
I told myself I wasn't lonely,
But that was definitely not true.
It's time to come out of the shadows,
To step into the light.
To be braver and more confident,
To hold myself at my true height.
Because the truth is that I do need friends,
And I can't do everything on my own.
Remember that you don't need to be perfect,
You don't have to be alone.
Popularity
Being popular.
Being known.
Being liked.
Being accepted.
When you’re popular life is great.
You have so many friends and trendy clothes.
And best of all everyone accepts you.
But when they accept you,
They don’t accept you as you.
They accept the person you created.
The person you changed yourself into.
You changed everything that made you.
Everything all your true friends loved.
The people who truly care are now gone.
They don’t understand how you can just change.
How you can just stop being their friend.
They wonder why you weren’t happy with them.
Why you had to get new friends that don’t care like they do.
But now they don’t care anymore.
You left them for a group of people.
People that don’t actually like you.
This group of people who feed on the fear of others.
They have nothing better to do with their life.
Seeking the weak and vulnerable.
Making them change, only to be disappointed.
You realize they were just playing a game.
Just messing with your mind and life.
Ruining everything.
But your true friends see what they’ve done.
They take you back with one condition.
Don’t make the mistake of changing.
Changing to please someone else.
Inequality Awareness
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If you have food in your fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head, and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the world.
If you have money in the bank, your wallet, and some spare change, you are among the top 8% of the world’s most wealthy.
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million people who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the agony of imprisonment and torture, or the horrible pangs of starvation, you are luckier than 50 million people alive and suffering.
If you can read this message, you are more fortunate than 3 billion people in the world, who cannot read at all.
Hunger
You think you're hungry?
Well, before you eat stop and think about something.
Take that hunger,
That growling pain
Multiply it by ten
Twenty
Fifty
One hundred
One thousand.
If you feel less hungry than that
You're lucky
If you feel less hungry than that
You should feel blessed
Because there are billions of people out in the world,
And some of them
Haven't been full for a week.
Some of them
Haven't been full for months
Some of them
Haven't ever been full in their life.
Still Hungry?
Stepping Closer to Insanity
That's it
It's over
I can't fight it anymore
The war is finally won
A war against myself
And it's the darker side that won.
It started with just one small bottle
And then two and three
And now here I am
No place to go
How did I get here?
Beats me.
The farther I went
Down that dark twisted path
The easier it was
To not look back
I've reached the end of that path now
I've hit a wall
But it's not a wall
It's a gate.
A gate that's sucking me in
Pulling me closer
Trying to take me away
And I have a choice to make.
I can give up all hope
Go through that gate
But it will close behind me forever
I'll never be able to go back.
Or I can awaken inside me
That tiny little part
That still has strength left
Strength to pull myself out of this mess
Away from this wall
But doing that
Would be going through hell.
I'd have to work and work
Trying to pull myself away
When it would be easier to stay here
Slumped against the wall
And let the gate pull me through
Closing the doors of life
Forever.
Left Behind
Was it something I did?
Was it something I said?
You've taken away,
The life I could have lead.
It is too late now,
It will never be the same.
The time has changed me.
The past is to blame.
I don't know my own parents,
I always wonder about who you could be,
Do you wish for me each night?
Or have you forgotten about me?
Do you ever think
Of how things could've been?
Had you not left me,
In that little plastic bin.
I don't know what to do
I don't know which way to go.
I thought parents were like angels,
I didn't know.
I thought you were dumb,
I thought you were smart,
But now I just wonder,
Do you even have a heart?
How could you leave me,
In that little tubbaware,
Just wrapped in a blanket,
On an orphanage stair?
I thought you were my protectors,
That you would one day come back for me,
But that was 1998,
Now it's 2015.
I grew up without parents,
I carved my own knife,
Now I'm done waiting for you,
You're out of my life.
Uniqueness
Everyone is different
Yet everyone is the same.
Everywhere is somewhere
It is from whence we came.
Nobody is Everyone
We are all ourselves.
Nowhere is Everywhere
We’re all books on shelves.
All can sing this song
But no one sings it the same
For we are all different
As is where we came.
We can sing this song.
We can dance this dance.
But our greatest differences
Happened just by chance.