The Weight of Being Unchosen

Authors note:

This collaboration was born from a response poem Gary L Taylor wrote after deeply feeling imi’s piece The Courage To Leave.

Though worlds apart, the same wounds are carried through different expressions, making it inevitable for our words to meet.

This piece is for everyone who has been quietly carrying a childhood wound, long overlooked, shaping a life forever.

- imi & Gary

Gary

Sitting in that strange place,
knowing what and who I want to be.
Anger and a gap of years
mean it couldn’t ever happen.

Imi

Learning how to walk
before my first birthday.
Angry at my mother
for taking my first wish away.

Ten years were too much of an interval.

Gary

I wanted to be like them.
Wanted to be them,
picking up skills as I went.
Misshaping myself from the inside.

Imi

Refrained I was
from what was granted to me by my birthright,
as if just being was ever enough.

Silencing my breaths
behind locked doors,
my tiny hands trembling
as I held a spoon,
their giggles remaining locked.

Gary

Still, I tried though, longing
and forcing myself to forego
childish instinct and action,
becoming a child adult hybrid.

imi

Learning how to read rooms
before I could tie my shoelaces.
Swallowing my voice,
growing estranged
from my own thoughts,
becoming conflict avoidant.

Gary

Who was I? A primary school kid
or a seventeen-year-old, with that weight on me?
Knowing things I should know,
missing what I shouldn’t.

Imi

I had my first alcohol,
first drug,
and countless more,

the kind my memory doesn’t bother to recall,
earlier than my peers.

What I should be remembering
turned into indifferent whatever’s.

Gary

Instead of an identity growing,
mine folded away inside itself.
Was what formed truly me
or an amalgamation of selves made through others?

Imi

I began chasing
a non-existent thief,
the one who met me in every mirror,
its gaze heavy with unease,
missing validation,
never daring to look within.

Gary

Responding to others brought one thing though.
Empathy. A reason. My essence.
I knew that must be my work,
and took the steps needed.

Imi

Others’ expressions became the judges,
turning my pulse dependent
on the fragile weight of words
thrown around by others.

Gary

Still, a purpose is not readily achieved
when you live as a version of you
curated to fill the light of others,
reaching for stars you don’t want to catch.

imi

A camera filming
a lifetime of memories,
always centring others
while I remained in the corner.

Breathing through my mouth,
the oxygen meeting my lungs,
heavy, unclean.

It fused into visceral red,
spreading the curse
of being the unchosen
into every cell
through my veins.

Gary

Trying to attain a perfect self
leads to tunnel vision,
singular choices all that are seen
where maybe multiples reside.

Imi

I needed to be loved,
and the love that I was taught
ranked the happiness of others A+
in my transcript,

of the school I never graduated,
or more accurately, my life.

Gary

Attaching myself to roles and people,
“seeing it through” for want of letting down who?
Other people, family, a version of me
trapped in that singular thinking?

Imi

Constantly fighting my father
to establish,
to walk,
to be what my sister said
would be a good fit.

Since I was seven,
I was journaling
but being a writer
was my sister’s dream.

Gary

As I’ve grown of late, I can see through
the mists of those traps of the mind.
There may be more than one way.
Thoughts, as well as I, can change.

Imi

A dragon stood against me,
threatening my life,
burning down everything I’d ever built.

Gary

Do I remain and dwell in those places
which cause my soul to ache
and the light inside to further dim?
No. I see past them now.

Imi

Burn it down.

Until nothing remained
but ashes to dusk,
dusk to dawn.

Gary

So I step forward, embracing choice,
letting go of perfect dreams,
finding something that truly fills me
with both truth and a sense of self.

Imi

Sitting down
at the terrace of our beautiful home,
watching the sky,
the full moon
surrounded by darkness,
until the sun was born.

In that last breath
I inhaled through my mouth
one final time,
the blood orange spread,
fusing with the baby blue sky.

I thought of tomorrow,
and for the first time,
I wasn’t grieving.

Thanks for reading! If our words moved you, let them travel.