Let Me Grow Up

Looking through my binder of poetry is a little depressing.  Some of the stuff I had written is not pleasant.  It is not all dark and dreadful, just sad.  Also, I varied between being afraid of any type of punctuation, where there is not much at all, to being in love with punctuation and seeing it splattered all over the piece.  I will type all of my flashback work exactly as it is in the binder.  Most of what is written is the first draft.  I felt that if a piece of my poetry was edited, it would loose something in the process.

This poem is from 2001.

Let Me Grow Up

I am eighteen years old
The decisions I make are my own
The life I am living is mine
I am legally able to be an adult
So why do you still act as if I were a child
I do not choose to hurt you,
To lead you astray
I do not make my choices
So that I may forget you or avoid you
I choose to grow out
Out of the skin that has become so tight
The skin of a child I never was
I choose to grow away
Away from the memories that haunt my childhood
Away from the unfair demands of an older adult
I choose to grow apart
Apart from the lies I've been living through
Apart from a love that I've never been given
I choose to grow down
The truth is,
I've been grown up for so long
I cannot remember growing up
I've been grown up for so long
Because of reasons you would not understand
So, now I choose to grow up
Why won't you let me?