Dear Blank

Dear Blank,
you forget a lot. You run around dodging responsibility like the plague. You never learn because you're always pointing fingers. You complain that no one trusts you, but how could they when you don't even trust yourself. Dear Blank, It's time to grow up. It's time to store your dreams away in a pocket where they'll stay forever remembered but out of reach. Where the girl you saw smiling in the mirror no longer exist, but the stress lines are not etched into her skin; almost permanent. Dear Blank, what do you expect to do with your future when you can hardly keep a job? You skip school, but you don't want to fail, and you laugh with your friends as though you have no cares in the world. You want someone to be proud but you do nothing to earn it. You receive backlash and you think you don't deserve it. Dear Blank, you're lazy. You stay in your room all day, you're antisocial and you don't communicate with your family. You watch YouTube and Netflix instead of doing your homework, you're not getting straight A's and your life will be nothing valuable if you don't go to school. Dear Blank, you're not as smart as you believe yourself to be. You're a know it all, and no one likes to have conversations with you because you always have to be right. You can't speak up for yourself, so why speak at all? You have to "get your life together," and soon.

Dear Writer,
I am not you. I am not perfect, and my mind does not function the same way yours does. I forget, that's always been a problem I've had. I dodge responsibility because failing another person terrifies me. I am not a victim, but I also know that not everything is my fault like you so claim it to be. If people trust me, I can learn to trust myself and value trust as a whole, but writer you don't know me. My trust has been violated and misused many times, and I can only act upon what I've been exposed to and what I've been taught. Dear Writer, maybe it's that you've grown up too fast. I’d like to think that I can hold on to those dreams forever, that I can still make them come true but I can empathize that you had to give up your dreams from somebody else. Please, do not take my chance away because somebody stole yours. Those stress lines exist yes, but so do the marks of many smiles that have yet to cross these lips. Dear writer, I shouldn’t have to apologize for being young and not exactly knowing what I want to do with my life. I know that yours has been planned out since sophomore year, but I do something I don't love. This is my first job, and it won’t be my last. I look this job as an opportunity to mess up, to grow and to learn. I don’t skip school to be funny, I do it because sometimes my chaotic mind gets to loud and makes it hard to focus. I dwell on my past for longer than I should and I end up in tears, and excuse me for not wanting anyone to see. My friends are the only people who make me feel like I belong somewhere. Not to big or too small, but a perfect fit. I want someone to acknowledge that I’m trying, and be proud that I haven’t given up yet. I receive backlash because your perspective doesn’t want to see my effort. Dear writer, I am not lazy or antisocial. I am confused and lost and sometimes I need the time to regroup and get my thoughts together. I am always up and always moving, always putting on a smile and it gets exhausting pretending. So if I take a day to myself to laugh down, and breathe and let my mind wander. I make the effort to talk to my family, and sometimes it is an effort because I still don’t feel that I’m understood and for good reason. I’m not a hormonal teenager, I’m a human with a mind that doesn’t function the same way yours does, and I’m wrong because of that. Dear writer, I do watch Netflix and Youtube, but so do you. It’s a release to get out of my mind and it’s honestly the only thing that helps me get to sleep. Otherwise I’ll stay up all night and ponder all the things you tell me I’m doing wrong. I get my homework, it might not be as soon as I get home but I get it done. And no, maybe I don’t have straight A’s but I’m working on it. Let’s be clear, I get get straight A’s, graduate from college and still do nothing with my life. You can be smart without going to school, and you can still be successful. Dear writer, I’d like to think that I’m street smart because I’ve learned things from experience, not textbooks. And no matter what, as long as i’m learning something, I am valuable. Also, I do know how to speak up for myself but I was taught from a young age to chose your battles. Maybe you’re right about me needing to get my life together, but I believe you do as well. You lack empathy, if you were to put yourself in my shoes - then you could understand why I am the way I am. Instead you judge blindly because you’re only looking at the surface, not what’s underneath. Dear writer, you taught me not to judge a book by it’s cover, how hypocritical of you to judge me.