Needs and wants

Someone I love dearly forced me to write a poem and read it out loud.
So putting it here is way less scary than that.

I need S P A C E
My mind gets as cramped as my legs
My breath gets stilted when my body can't move
I need to look around and see   Nothing
Hear   Nothing

Every once in a while I need
   to be alone

I need to break away
   from who I am


I need to S T O P
   Stop being a daughter
                     a friend
                     a sister
                     a woman

I need the space to hear my thoughts
 without them bouncing off and ONE
                                           or any THING

Space can be filled so easily
Quiet ends so quickly

It can be hard to Stop and be S T I L L

I need to not be needed
to not be asked to laugh, listen, explain, or answer
to anyone but myself

I need the space empty
and the mood light

Am I alone in this?

Have you ever looked at your life and suddenly realized that it has started to escalate quickly like the fight scene in Anchorman?
One minute you're walking down the street with your friends wearing your fancy suits
and the next thing you know, Ben Stiller is sporting a Mexican Mustache and Brick is killing a guy with a trident?

And nothing does a better job of reminding you how emotionally ill-equiped you are for this than that big pimple on your face
(fyi: when morosely mumbling to myself about the age gap between me and my co-workers, I was NOT hoping for clogged pores to be the solution to evening the playing field)

So being in Grad school is hard because it is a LOT of work
but NOT being in Grad school is also hard because you feel like you're not working towards what you want in life
And cleaning your room is hard because Who Has The Time?
But NOT cleaning means that you can't bare to look around because the clutter is too painfully and accurately portraying what your brain looks like
So you wade around in your own filth with your eyes half squinted shut and pretend it's not there

And pretty much everything stays hard once you're no longer spending your time playing with My Little Ponies
and even that can be difficult because they get lost and its hard to pick your favorite and once you get creative and decide to play with braids or hair gel then there is No Going back
and that ugly braid (or god-forbid the sticking-straigh-up-strand from when you thought that pink plastic needed a trim) will haunt you for the rest of your life

And you vent at all the wrong times (like writing a blog instead of an essay)
And stay quiet when you should speak up (like when you let someone dictate your choices for you)
and hold it in when you want to let it out (because screaming in public is frowned upon)
Until you are loosing track of how long you've been standing in the shower
and you realize that those frustrating sounds are coming from you
as you mentally cross of your list
and edit you list
and add to your list

When did 11am start to feel like late rather than early?
When did 5:30 become time to wake up instead of the Middle of the night?
When did my life turn into one big To-Do list?

And how am I supposed to stay classy when I never had an ounce of class to begin with?