Freedom

College.
On your own.
The next step of life.
Freedom.

There is a loneliness in freedom.
I am hours from home.
No one knows me here,
I can be whoever I choose.

I can be whoever I choose.
But no one knows me here.
They do not know my favorite color, or how many sisters I have.
They do not know me.
They do not wish to know me.
There is no one to know.

There is no one to know.
The girl I was sits in her bedroom.
In a small town in upstate New York.
The girl I was is crying in her mother arms.
Is crying in her best friend since 5th grades arms.

She is terrified.
She is going somewhere no one will know her.
She will not pass familiar faces in the hallway.
She will not spend nights at her sisters house.
She will know, no one.

If you know no one, if no one knows you.
Do you matter?
Do you exist?

Does she exist?
Do I exist still?
I am not in Rochester.
I am no longer surrounded but those I’ve known since first grade.

All I am here is a nameless face in a sea of thousands.
I am terrified.

I am not just hours from my house.
I am hours from my family, friends and everything I have ever known.

I do not know how to make myself known here.
I do not know how to learn and know here.
I am terrified.

I am free.
I am ready.
I am building the rest of my life.
Above all, I am terrified

———

Wrote this poem after having a panic attack in front of my counselor while talking about college plans, so I am in fact not in college this is just how I feel abt it rn <3

——

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1280grh/when_the_wolves_came/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/128a8vi/trees_by_the_sea/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1