Born a Statistic | Teen Ink

Born a Statistic

May 10, 2010
By briannebohrman SILVER, Bethel, Connecticut
briannebohrman SILVER, Bethel, Connecticut
6 articles 2 photos 6 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;If God is the DJ, then life is the dance floor, love is the rhythm, and you are the music.&quot; -P!NK<br /> <br /> &quot;I know how it feels, filling in the blanks and looking to the bright side when there is no bright side.&quot;


There will always be a piece of that five-year-old girl living inside me.
The five year old girl who,
Up until then,
Was unaware of human flaw.
The cruelty one could possess,
And inflict on one so innocent.
She had to grow up early.
Can’t say she had it hard.
Can’t say she had it easy.
She was brought up in a nice town,
With a loving family.
Though, things often went so out of control for her
How she did it? I still don’t know
Most of the time, she shut her mouth,
And learned quickly, how unfair and cruel life can turn out to be.
The girl was broken before she was even made,
The teacher, that cruel, cruel teacher sat her there in the center of the carpet,
The rapidly growing chants clouded her thoughts.
The sensation of spinning faces twisted her vision.
Encouraged by the naiveté of mindless adults.
She struggled to pick up the pieces of her broken voice box.
But forever it will haunt her.
Her parents wanted her to be normal.
She was anything but.
Her freedom and individuality was restricted.
The one thing that set her apart,
Was concealed behind doctors doors
And medicine that tasted like spoiled apple cider.
She was one in 10,000.
She was born a statistic.
What the doctors failed to realize, she was a girl.
Practically a baby.
Whose life had been changed forever,
By the lack of compassion for her sore heart and broken voice.
I’m a girl.
Practically a baby.
Who currently lives with the haunting fear,
That I am not cured,
But continues on,
Sucking it up and learning to deal with,
What life handed me.
Just like what my teacher taught me when I was five.


The author's comments:
We were assigned for creative writing class to revise one of our peices. So I decided to revise a memoir peice completely into a free-verse style poem. I have a condition called selective mutism, and I really wanted to raise awareness about it, while telling my story. I like how it is easily connected to rare conditions that other people may suffer from, that behind every statistic, there is a person who suffers alone because of lack of societies awareness.

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