My So-Called Living
When I was just a teenage girl who didnt know any better,
I began to think, wonder and dream...
Anything to get away from what I had suffered...
Two angry parents who denied themselves a divorce.
And out-spoken gay brother living with AIDS.
A sister with four children and an abusive husband.
And myself, mad at the world, mad at God.
I had to leave, for fear Id turn out the same way.
Thats where I was foolish.
For once you leave, you can never come back...
And you always want to come back.
Determined to prove my independence
I sought out an apartment in a big city.
My own little niche in the world.
Where I could be just another faceless person,
A mystery to the mind.
But temptation proved to be too great,
And I was forced to become what I never wanted to be...
A drug addict.
An alcoholic.
A whore.
A mother.
A girlfriend with a busted lip.
A woman with a disease...
A disease of the damned.
How could I get so low?
Lower than those I strive so hard to be on top of?
Four years ago when I came here to this city,
To be seen and not known,
I was a young girl with a chip on her shoulder.
Four years ago I learned many things, and finally my life,
The life and freedom and happiness I wanted so very badly-
Began.
But can you really call my life,
What I am today,
What I have become.....
Living?