Deep inside my heart is my secret prison. I send parts of myself there, sometimes - to hide, to be hidden. Parts I feel I ought to be shameful of, parts I think I ought not to.
A child trying to look after her parents. A child afraid and unprepared; a child who never had time to mourn the loss of a normal life. A burden so heavy, but where are we carrying it to anyway?
If you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
Two roads diverged in an Ivy League wood. But I was never one to travel the road, anyway. My degrees hang heavy on the wall, reminders of the conventional triumphs I abandoned along my journey.
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too;
The realisation that, this time, the baggage is mine and it is heavy from years of travel. Do you know what I'm carrying? Does it show when you look at me?
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
to serve your turn long after they are gone,
And then sometimes in my darkest moments, I wonder if I should add to my heart-prison some of my feelings for you. I yearn to express this great love with wild abandon, but I can't help but wonder if I ought to collect the butterflies of my love and release them one by one.
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
with sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is my world and everything that's in it, my love.
That poem really messed me up when I was young.