A poem —
I try to make it okay. Make myself okay.
Not okay.
‘How are you?’
‘Okay, I’m okay.’
That’s what we want to hear. You’re okay. I’m okay. We’re all okay. Sure, life is tough but toughen up. Make that smile shine and show the world you’re strong enough to be okay!
Tiredness, hopelessness means you’re negative. Stay positive and make it all okay. You have to keep up the hard work, tiredness and hopelessness can be overcome if you try hard enough.
I try hard enough. I spent years and years trying. Trying to be okay, trying to be enough.
But it was never enough. There was still more I needed to do, needed to be.
I never learned how to be okay. To be okay with the ways of the world. To be okay when a stranger tells me to smile. To be okay when that stranger stares too long.
I never learned to be okay when they told me I was too quiet, too shy, too smart, too weird, too negative, too depressing, too sensitive. I didn’t want to be okay when
My boss called me a people pleaser
When my boyfriend said I only got into this college because I was black
When the stranger at the airport called me a ‘science bitch’
When my friend and almost lover walked out after I told him how badly he hurt me.
I don’t want to be okay when see the headlines, when I read the painful stories of strangers suffering. I don’t want to walk away and be okay. But how do you function otherwise?
All you can be is okay to get on, to get by. Only you can make it okay. Only I can make it okay.
