A Message to Myself

Hey, you don’t really know me anymore and you I hardly recognize

We stare at that dreaded picture showing the pure beauty as we become uglier

By the second, like Dorian Gray, except the complete opposite

You might not get the reference, but you will as you become less innocent

“Never innocent” you think, always crying full of guilt

Spoiler alert, you stop crying but engage in worse habits

I notice your arms are clean not scarred by intentional habits

The scar on your left leg being the only one, the rest you don’t recognize

If you looked at me, you might see a lot you hate, a face riddled with guilt

“Why am I still upset?” you might ask as your smile fades showing a side uglier

You still laugh, to get people to stop staring, yeah, it isn’t as innocent

From cow jokes to jokes with no punch, you became the opposite

The humor is still there, but it’s tasteless now, just laughs for reasons opposite

You joke about death, suicide, and flip off the grim reaper as part of bad habits

Hoping for that scythe to take your head and end the tale that isn’t so innocent

A Final Destination, you’ll draw a map to, a map you don’t recognize

I know, horror movies freak you out, but they appeal more later as CGI becomes uglier

You learn to laugh at the awful things, while still hoping for a time where you feel no guilt

Unfortunately, as hard as you try, you still care and can’t wash away the guilt

You worry what people think, you doubt yourself still, that’s where we aren’t opposite

You do things you never thought you could do, concealing the self uglier

You get up on stage, recite a poem from memory, but still can’t break other habits

After all of it you’re still afraid, you still freeze, that you surely recognize

You ask a girl out, get rejected, decide to stay alone, remember times that were innocent

When you cheered for Batman, and not the Joker, when you were the most innocent

When you didn’t question the hero and hated the bad guys with no guilt

Now you like characters a bit more broken, characters you might not recognize

Bruce Wayne isn’t perfect, and does questionable things that are indeed opposite

Of what you thought he was which lets you keep watching, never breaking the habits

You stop making stories about Power Rangers and make up stories that might look uglier

However they help more, possibly saving you from a future uglier

They lose limbs, they get sick, they question things, they long for times more innocent

They exist so you’ll stop feeling alone, stop being the only one with these weird habits

Good news though, after friendships that left you sinking, you find people with as much guilt

Bad news however, you find the negative, search it out, look for what makes them opposite

Of how you originally viewed them, find something to hate, something you recognize

There are happy times with less guilt, where you don’t succumb to bad habits

Then there are uglier days that make you want to die, looking in a direction opposite

Of where you want to be, the not so innocent road that you’ll sadly recognize