Jennifer


Oh Jennifer,
I wanted to be like her
She was the popular one
The one that had so much fun
The boys liked her
The girls did too
And she didn’t have much on her mind
Not the way I do
She talked a lot
And I listened
But I always thought
There was something different


I knew it from the start
It was the beating of my heart
It was so much heavier
Than her pretty little flutter
I just wanted to mutter
Crazy and dark things
All of the time
But I wrote them down
In a little book
With a deceitful cover

But nobody knew
The secrets that I hid
On those pages
And the life that I lived

My mother never found out
My father never knew
The difference, Jennifer
Between me and you

I always knew,
By the look in your eyes
That you weren’t thinking
Thinking of your demise
While I was brooding
And contemplating things
You were free
And didn’t want anything to do with me

Suddenly I became your past
Something you forgot
And I went along
And I thought
Why couldn’t I be like you?
So simple and so nice

When all I felt was anger
And depression and rolled the dice?
With my life
So many times
I gambled with my fate
While you, yes you
You opened the gate
To your wonderful future

Attended a great school
Got into the right sorority
While I was angry
And pent up in my room
I was writing
Writing about impending doom

My condition got worse
Things never changed
They just went from potent to toxic
In a matter of years

Before I knew it
And before you would know
I ended up reeling
Covered in snow

In a world
I had created
All of my own
Through risks and gambling
With the life I had known

My mind became fragmented
So many shards
My reality became frightening
And I was threatening the guards
In front of those big metal doors
That trapped me in

The one morning
That they discovered I had been
Not thinking correctly
I was all wrong
That is what they told me
And I will always believe

That my head was not right
So what was I to do
Look at the walls
And I thought of you

While I was locked up
Behind white sterile doors
And wrapped in a robe
That smelled of sanitary horrors

You were out there in the world
Having fun with your friends
Thinking freely and rightly
As you should
And I had envy
That you could

They tried to fix my thoughts
But they would not budge
I didn’t know they were wrong
But who was I to judge?

They gave me many things
Some oral, some in my veins
They made me feel different
But I didn’t know

What different was
Because I never had felt typical
So what was the difference
Between then and now
And who was I to judge
The ifs and the how?

Of why I was there
And whose fault was it
The truth is it was God
He had dealt me a bad hand
But then if I believed
I would surely be damned

So I thought and I thought
But that got me into trouble
So I followed the others
And tried to play double

The real me was gone
I don’t know where to
But the acting me was there
Trying to play “guess who?”

I was Kim
The atypical one
The one in room 6
With the borderline one

They hadn’t fit me yet
Into one category or another
They just let me sit
And think it over real long
Until I felt crazier
And felt completely gone

Weeks went by
And nothing changed
I still thought
That I wasn’t deranged

I felt they were tricking me
Giving me poison
And that I shouldn’t be
Behind these metal doors

I thought it was all a game
That I had to play
So I faked it and I feigned it
So they could have it their way

I brushed my hair till it gleemed
And I put on my clothes
I did what was told of me
And always obeyed
And never questioned
Anything that they said

A month went by
Nobody heard me cry
I did it at night
When the doctors were gone
And the lights were turned off
They didn’t hear my silent song

Of the horror in my head
And all of the dread
And I didn’t understand
This foreign land
That I had to navigate
As an amateur
I was so lost
And so impure

So I watched Jennifer
Through the thick barred window
And tried to emulate
The actions that I didn’t know

This was a whole new world
That I had never known
The world of the “normals”
The people I was shown

On movies and on TV
But it was never me
I was always writing
Writing about the way I see
The world from a different
Different point of view
But that is the difference
The difference between me and you

Jennifer will never know
As the months went by
That I secretly thought of her
And uttered a silent cry

I wanted to be her
My whole life
But I could never attain
The simplicity of her strife

Her complaints seemed normal
Her sadness was always confined
And I never heard her utter
Anything unrefined

How can this be me?
The one from this progeny?
Genetically flawed
Biochemically

They worked and they worked
With so many drugs
That finally they had decided
To send me away

Send me somewhere
Where I wouldn’t be a bother
Yelling and ranting
About nonsensical fodder

But here I am
Years from then
And I see Jennifer
And I think of her then
But would I rather be her?
No, not really
Because my life
Is so rich
With the not so normal
And people say
It is great to not be normal
But until you are judged
As a danger to yourself or others
And confined in a place
That just smothers
Your individuality
That thing that makes you you and me me
You’ll never know
Why I say the words
To be or not to be


That is my curse
Biochemically imbalanced
Whatever they might say
But I just know
That today is a new day
And with the assistance
Of some pills and some friends
I can get by
With some peace and clarity
But I will never look back
And wish I was her
Because now I know
What she missed out on


The universal understanding
Of pain and fear
That we all must experience
For that is most near
To our human existence
Whatever brings us here
To this Earth and this place
That we hold so dear

I would write so much more
About the differences between
What makes you you
And what makes me me
But that would be missing
The complete point exactly


Which is that we were never made
To be happy eternally
We were all meant to be
Just who we want to be


And sometimes we can’t choose
What will happen to us
But we can see the suffering
In other’s eyes
And hear the baby
When it cries
Of hunger or of pain
Whatever the cause


Don’t you understand?
We need this pause
To think and understand
This thoroughly through
What makes me me and
What makes you you


The difference is clear
To me at least now
But I just want you to know
That I would have it no other way


You might call me crazy
But I would just have to say
What is normal?
And would I want to be that way?


Nothing ever came
From the loud and happy ones
It seems that the odd and the oppressed
Always had something to share
Something deeper
Something to do with their despair
And people can relate
To a deep-seated emotion
That we all have
At least a notion
So I think it is known
That I will always be me
And you will be you
For you I can never be.