Not A Bad Thing

So I wrote this slam poem the other day, to read at our Self-Acceptance Week Open Mic night on Friday. I just thought I'd share.

Heart pounding

Palms sweaty

Knees weak

Arms…..spaghetti?

Isn’t necessarily a bad thing

Adrenaline pumping

Head swirling

Stomach contracting

Chest constricting

Doesn’t mean there is something wrong

Anxiety

Is normal

So why doesn’t it feel

Normal

Why am I trained to believe that I

Am the problem

That I’m the crazy one

That there is something

Wrong

Deeply wrong

Like,  ‘What in actual fuck’ wrong

With me

Nothing

There is nothing wrong with me

So I’m anxious

So what

So sometimes my head plays games

And a small ailment

Can become the next path to death

So what

So sometimes I get overly concerned

About having a schedule

And being on time

So what?

So sometimes I fall too hard

And I fall too fast

Because I want you to love me

Before you think I’m crazy too

Because sometimes

I believe them

I believe all those lies

That I’m not ‘normal’

That I have problems

I feed into the expectation

That as a woman

A strong,

Independent

Free thinking woman

Who doesn’t put up with shit

Who just happens to sometimes

panick until my chest constricts

And then the tears come without stopping

This

This all means I’m crazy

But you know what?

Fuck that

Fuck this ridiculous belief

That’s been shoved down my throat

And so deeply engrained in my brain

For 21 years

That makes me think that I’m crazy

Because I am not

I am not crazy.

It just so happens

That one of my traits happens to be due

To my unbalanced levels of serotonin

That my trait means that instead of running

Perfectly balanced

Sometimes I get a little high strung

This one little trait

In hundreds of genes

has founded this  this ridiculous belief

That I am crazy

I have plenty of other great traits

I’ve got some damn nice eye’s

And a face that freckles faster in the sun

Than an ice cube can melt

I also have thick thighs

An obnoxious laugh

And a verbous vocabulary

These are all traits that are accepted

So why can’t I accept the fact that

My heart beats quickly

And sometimes I have to take my shoes off

To balance my internal temperature

Why can’t I accept that

I’m not crazy

That there isn’t anything wrong with me.

It’s taken me a long time to get here

A longer time

Than I can portray in a poem

A selection of words

But I’m here.

I’m standing here.

And you know what?

I’m not crazy.

I accept that sometimes I get worried about missing my alarm

And so I don’t sleep at all

I accept that sometimes my adrenaline gets the best of me

And sometimes

Even picking where I go to dinner can be a life or death decision

The thing is though

I’ve made the decision to accept that

To accept that maybe my brain runs a 112 times faster

Than your average car

And I’ve come to accept that

I need to fix my thinking about myself

I’ve come to accept myself

So no longer will I feed into this fucked up notion

Of crazy

Or this ridiculous belief that

I am flawed

The only thing that’s flawed with me

Is that sometimes I eat too many twix bars

And that i swear a bit too much

Beyond that

I am accepting myself

I hope that you can accept that too.