Life is not sitting in your room

Afraid to step out the door,

Afraid of the world at your fingertips,

Afraid of opportunity, afraid of change.

 

How can something so beautiful, be so cruel?

Peace and war, a constant battle, fighting for victory.

While I cry for justice behind the screen of a message board.

While I pray for equality as I walk past the homeless on the streets.

I scream in my mind and live without uttering a word.

 

Such a hypocrite, but aren’t we all?

Afraid to raise my voice and be greeted with silence.

Afraid to be different and be alone.

Afraid to become broken inside when I remain silent.

But what do I know?

A barely educated middle class white teenage girl

Living in a country sworn to loyalty

That turns a blind eye on the deaths of innocent lives.

 

I am here waiting.

I wait and I wait and I wait

For our “great” country to kill

oppression and discrimination

But the guns are pointed at us,

The minority.

 

A few voices shout out after shootings and deaths,

But they never seem to last for that was last week’s news.

Here’s the latest fashion, much more important.

Brainwashed by the white media hiding the racist, sexist, and bigot majority.

Everything is fine when it’s not happening to you.

I feel so small, only one voice out of a million,

But I could shout so loud.

 

What do I shout?

Will it make a difference?

What can I do to help?

I want to help.

I need to help.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Silence, silence, silence.

I can’t be alone.

I can’t be the only one who wants peace.

School shootings,

Police brutality against African-Americans,

LGBT murders,

discrimination against the Islam religion.

All this in our country that persuades us everything is fine,

it’s normal.

No!

 

It’s not normal to walk down the street

Afraid of being who you are.

I’m sorry

If I don’t think it’s normal

That children are murdered at school.

I’m sorry

That I want life to not be about waiting for someone else

To make a change that needs to be made.

And I’m sorry

Because I don’t know how to do anything

But open my damn mouth.

 

Life should be more than just surviving.

Don’t we deserve better than that?

This I learned from a television character

That was killed off because of her sexuality.

LGBT people are killed

In television shows and in real life.

Media is the bridge.

Maybe if there’s equality in media

Less children will be taught to hate,

Less children will be taught to hold a gun,

And less children will be taught to kill.

 

I hate this, I hate this,

I hate this.

The need to act, to scream,

To start a movement.

Make life not about

Black and white, sexuality,

Nationality, religion, and gender.

 

But I am just a girl

And media tells me to shut up,

Look pretty and only wear pink on Wednesdays.

How can I disagree without a bounty on my head,

Heart pounding in my ears,

And the fear to look over my shoulder

In case someone’s there?

My death would bring nothing

Except my silence which already exists.

Maybe this

The written words I leave on the page

Will spark your thoughts

Or maybe they will collect dust

On the bottom of my mind.

 

Sincerely,

A white, gay, teenage girl, afraid of the world