{"sf1_id":1635710,"sf2_id":"Welkqyj1","title":"Defining Moment","author":"Velisren","words":728,"posted_at":"2020-10-05T03:30:00.000Z","tags":["Poetry","SFW"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1635710-defining-moment","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/Welkqyj1","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/0c/60/0c6074f1-214a-47f2-9d5c-e9e77d80e027","description":"#3 of Poetry\n\nThis one is less poetry as it isn't poetic. I still felt it should go in with the rest of my poetry.\nI like to call this my Life Poem, a shortened version of the struggles in my life.","content":"Life doesn't start when you're born.\n\n  \n\nThat's just what I believe.\n\n  \n\nWhen you're that young, you have no recollection of the world you live in, it's all just incomprehensible memories and faded Polaroid images.\n\n  \n\nYou come into the world not knowing what's going on.\n\n  \n\nYou're too young to know what true happiness is, what it means to laugh until it hurts.\n\n  \n\nToo young to know what true anger is, vision and judgement clouded as rage boils over.\n\n  \n\nToo young to know what true pain is, like the kind you get when you stub your toe on a corner,\n\n  \n\nOr the kind you get when you realize that this world is not as forgiving as you once thought it was.\n\n  \n\nThere is a message etched into everyone's book of life written so viciously, it bleeds through, soaking the pages.\n\n  \n\nThat is, in my personal opinion, when a life starts. That is when it starts to shape.\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n\nThe defining moment.\n\n  \n\nMy defining moment started in fifth grade\n\n  \n\nAge ten\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n\nSitting amongst young adolescent minds in a dark room while the map of what was going to happen to them over the next decade or so was drawn out before their eyes.\n\n  \n\nA guidebook of sorts telling us what we could and could not do.\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n\nBut some eyes looked too deeply\n\n  \n\nSaw too many questions.\n\n  \n\nThose eyes went home to seek out answers.\n\n  \n\nToo many answers.\n\n  \n\nSuch curiosity destroyed what childhood naivety I used to have, replacing the gentle scribbles in my life's book with sporadic entries like that of a broken fountain pen.\n\n  \n\nSplotchy.\n\n  \n\nThe saying goes that curiosity killed the cat, but what drove the cat to fall was the lack of satisfaction\n\n  \n\nBecause what it once thought made sense ended up causing more questions.\n\n  \n\nAnd a powerful question is often led by a deep desire to sate.\n\n  \n\nFor the next half of my life, I would be thrust into a world I never asked for.\n\n  \n\nA world where my sense of being was chipped away with every trip\n\n  \n\nSlip up\n\n  \n\nMistake,\n\n  \n\nLeaving behind a statue sculpted by its hands.\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n\nA piece of living art, moving and breathing, but feeling just as empty as the real thing.\n\n  \n\nIn my middle school years, I found myself trapped within walls I erected,\n\n  \n\nNailed together by my regrets and guilt,\n\n  \n\nEmotions that kept everything else inside, causing me to feel nothing but sorrow.\n\n  \n\nOnce, twice, thrice, every relapse drove a nail through.\n\n  \n\nIt took four years before I broke through that wall.\n\n  \n\nToo much happened too fast, and my desire for familiarity snapped under the pressure.\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n\nI had to leave it all behind,\n\n  \n\nAll the friends and memories I had made, good and bad,\n\n  \n\nI couldn't stand being surrounded by it all anymore.\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n\nSo 11th grade came around and a new page was turned.\n\n  \n\nWith the ridges and wrinkles being left behind in my book, I felt free.\n\n  \n\nBut the bleed through from my defining moment still showed,\n\n  \n\nFresh, tainting the steps I took forward and always leaving a path to the past.\n\n  \n\nMy attitude may have changed, but the situation stayed very much the same,\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n\nThe blows hitting just as hard.\n\n  \n\nExperience provided resistance, but not resolution.\n\n  \n\nEvery day brought a war,\n\n  \n\nA fight I would always lose.\n\n  \n\nA fight where my humanity was tested and bombarded by foreign figures.\n\n  \n\nMorning light not bringing new beginnings, but hopeless ends to a sleepless night,\n\n  \n\nNights spent awake by artificial light.\n\n  \n\nTo this day, my defining moment haunts me, keeps record of all the times I was beaten down.\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n\nAnd I know I'm not alone.\n\n  \n\nShe was raised alone, and is still trying to find where she belongs.\n\n  \n\nHe bears the scars from the mistakes of someone else's past.\n\n  \n\nEverything from addiction\n\n  \n\nTo depression\n\n  \n\nTo anxiety.\n\n  \n\nBroken families\n\n  \n\nBroken hearts\n\n  \n\nBroken people.\n\n  \n\nBut even after being left stranded\n\n  \n\nScarred\n\n  \n\nShameful,\n\n  \n\nEven after laying on the page as fresh wounds stain the book once more,\n\n  \n\nWe keep going.\n\n  \n\nWe're still here.\n\n  \n\nThe bruises and lacerations will heal for the most part.\n\n  \n\nThe stains will dry and become a memory.\n\n  \n\nWe keep going because\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n\nMaybe things will get better.\n\n  \n\nMaybe tomorrow won't hit so hard.\n\n  \n\nAnd maybe\n\n  \n\nJust maybe\u0026nbsp;\n\n  \n\nWe'll look behind and find that the defining moment isn't marking every step we take.\n\n  \n\nAnd that the next page will turn to a spotless start.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1635709-punctuation.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1649599-recovery.json"}}