I went to a party the other night and met the vice captain of another school.
He was clean cut, gentlemanly, sweet and well spoken.
I had been drinking, wearing my black ripped jeans and an old flannel shirt and constantly saying the first thing that came into my head.
We were from two different walks of life but somehow we got talking and had a really interesting conversation about the social groups we each hail from.
He unintentionally made a comment about how people like me come across uneducated and just plain wasting their life.
I put my finger to his lips to stop his words and calmly said this:
“People like you, judge people like me without ever knowing what we know. You think that because our clothes are trashed, our music is angry and our lives aren’t like yours, we don’t feel or see. You think we’re blind because we don’t see what you see. But we do, and if anything we see a lot more then you do.
You and I are the same age, but i’ve seen more and felt more now, then you’ll ever feel in your lifetime.
Have you ever sat on a beach talking and watching the sunset, only to watch the sunrise as well?
Have you ever felt the thrill of running from the cops because they’ve caught you drinking in the park?
If you’re ever in trouble, do you know people who would take you in faster then your own family would?
You learn about our society and our culture through the textbooks by your teachers. I’ve learned the truth by sitting on the sidewalk at 1 AM watching people leave bars and get into drunken fights about race and gender and politics, which end with a life lost.
You talk about what you want for your lives, while we fight for what we want in our futures.
You’ll never know what its like to lay on your rooftop with a bottle of Jack, because its the only place where they can’t find you to bring you down.
You don’t have a box disguised as a brick on your chimney, containing notes written by the tears of your heart, laying beside the razorblades that released the bloodstains on the edges.
You’ve never stood on the side of a cliff with the most beautiful view in the world, while pressing a gun to the side of your skull.
While you’re sound asleep at 2 AM, we all wake up shaking and crying because of reasons we ourselves don’t understand.
We run and run and run and never ever look back until we can see the sun over the horizon.
We live each night like its our last because we know that life is short.
You walk down the street with only the goal ahead on your mind. We stop and wonder what the people around us are thinking.
You are blind to the true ugliness of the world because its been veiled by a thick layer of bulleproof glass by your class.
We are prey to the ugliness of the world and we see it and we fight with it or against it.
Either way, we see more then you do, because we are shown it more then you are.
So don’t tell us we’re wasting our lives because we choose to live it quickly.
Don’t call us blind because we see past the focal point of the photograph.
Don’t call us uneducated because we can’t pass a simple test because our minds are working too quickly for us to retain your information.
You know nothing of who we are, and we know nothing of who you are.
I wish you could see what I see, but you would never because to you we are the people you pass everyday and only see the mess we’re in, without considering the pain or love that lead us to be in that mess.”
I felt really tired so I rested my head on his shoulder and fell asleep.
I woke up in the morning with writing on my hand.
It was a phone number and a message; ” Show me, I want to see what you see ”