ThePoetSky Archive

I turned 30 on Sunday (May 1st). To celebrate, my parents, son, brother, grandparents, and I went out to a park. We chose a park to keep it outside and hopefully avoid spreading COVID to my grandparents.

When I arrived, it was a little overcast, but we didn’t think too much of it. My dog was ecstatic about being out and about. Then the wind started to pick up. By the time we sat down for dinner, it was getting tricky to hold on to our food. Most of us had coats, so we bundled up as it started getting colder.

Then it started to rain. It wasn’t a downpour, but it was cold enough to make us uncomfortable. My mom suggested moving it to their house, which was a ways away. I asked about my grandparents’ house, which was around the corner. My grandparents agreed, so we packed everything up and relocated to their house.

Everything turned out great in the end. That got me thinking that life often goes like this. You make your plans, and they don’t turn out the way you expect. But sometimes, when you’ve got people who care about you, people who love each other and want to help each other, everything turns out for the best.

That night, I wrote How Life Goes as a reflection of the day’s events. It was nice to think about that. All the people looking out for me, and how we can all work together to turn a dreary day around.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

When I was a kid, I loved the show Beast Wars, a continuation of The Transformers TV series. Despite having seen only a handful of the episodes, I collected a bunch of the toys. Along with LEGO and superheroes, they were what I played with the most, even though at first, I kept having my brother help transform them.

Recently, I read a webcomic called Dumbing of Age (warning: not for younger audiences), a webcomic about, among other things, college. The author is a big fan of Beast Wars, and it comes up a lot. Every time it did, it made me think a little of how much I loved it growing up.

Finally, I decided to dig out my old toys from my parents’ house. They were quite dusty from not having been taken out in years, and the joints were a little stiff. I could remember how to transform some of them, but I had to look up the others (fortunately, I have the Internet for that).

As I played with them more, the memories of those times came back to me. The depression and stress that have become so constant washed away, and for a little while, I could be a kid again. No deadlines. No anxiety. Just me and my toys.

I wrote Back to Those Days thinking of all of that. Celebrating the brief return to those days, opening up the box of memories and smiling again. And reminding myself that every now and then, it’s good to drift back to happier times.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

Most of my friends are solitary people. Introverts, loners, however they label themselves, they don’t tend to reach out. It’s often up to me to reach out.

When they have problems or go through difficult times, as a result, they’ll just deal with it themselves. Or worse, ignore it and hope it goes away on its own. This is never a good idea, and no one should do this.

As I’ve always been, I’m different. When I have problems, I want to talk to people about them. In the absence of someone to whom I can talk, I’ll talk to myself about it, and resolve most of my problems that way.

I have friends, and we don’t need to deal with our problems alone. We can deal with them together, because life happens. It happens to everyone, and when it does, we needn’t deal with it ourselves. That’s why I wrote Get Through Life Together. As a reminder to everyone that, so long as you’ve got someone, you never need to get through life alone.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

One day when I was eight, my class played a trivia game. This particular instance had the class split in two, and my team lost. When that happened, I knew what was coming next, and I tried to hide it. But I couldn’t. I started crying, as I always did at that age when I lost. It wasn’t a temper tantrum; I was so upset that I couldn’t help but start crying. I didn’t understand why. All I knew was that no one else did that.

Jump ahead to when I was twelve. In German class, my teacher used a series of videos to help us learn, and one assignment we had was to act them out, showing that we’d learned and understood the material well enough to recite it from memory. I got the part I wanted the least, and that set me off again. I started crying, but I was old enough to know how to hide it (mostly). I still didn’t understand why I was that way. I just thought it was because I was upset and couldn’t help it.

Both times were because I was upset, although I didn’t understand why I was so upset. Why could everyone else get over it so much more easily than I could?

Jump ahead to present day. I’d long since identified that I clutched memories that involved me making mistakes far longer than was healthy, and no one likes making mistakes. But I identified a bigger problem than just not liking to make mistakes. And what helped me do that was my job.

A lot of software development is trial and error. It’s not fun when you get partway through coding something, only to realize that the entire design, the backbone of what you were doing, has a problem and has to be torn down. This kept happening to me throughout the year, as I went from one volatile component to another (this itself was a mistake). Every time it happened, I got angry, I got upset, and I got depressed. Thanks to a friend of mine, the next time this happened, I identified something so internal to me that I hadn’t noticed it: my perfectionism.

When I am forced to face the fact that I’m not perfect, I get upset. I get angry, and I get depressed. This has been going on constantly throughout my life. The two anecdotes are only two of the many examples of this happening throughout my life. Now, finally, I can identify it.

I wrote I Am Not Perfect as a constant reminder to myself that I am not perfect. And that’s okay.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

I write a lot about being different. I’ve always been different from everyone else, as far back as I can remember. I managed to find people a lot like me, but I was still different. We were different.

One thing I noticed was that I’d get excited when other people wouldn’t. I still do, but I’m better at hiding it. I want to express how happy I am to see someone, but I don’t want to make that person uncomfortable, so I restrain myself. Part of it is having ADHD; my emotions fluctuate more than others’ do.

I started thinking about that a few weeks back, and realized it wasn’t just getting overexcited to see people. It’s also the opposite end. When someone will tell me something, I want to be happy for them, but I don’t feel anything. Sometimes it’s because my mind is somewhere else entirely, others is because I wouldn’t care if it weren’t someone about whom I care telling me.

As I thought more about it, I remembered many times I’d written poetry to express my feelings throughout my life. In particular, I’d try to express something that has always been challenging for me to express: romantic love. Instead of saying “I like you a lot, will you go out with me?” (something with which I still struggle), I’d write a poem expressing that. I stopped when, after several attempts, my success rate remained 0%.

Even though people haven’t always understood or accepted the way I feel, I know that somewhere out there, there are people who will. I wrote My Emotions Don’t Work Right for everyone like me, who struggles with this, so they’ll know they’re not alone. Maybe people didn’t accept me back then. Not everyone accepts me now. But there are other people like me, and we all deserve acceptance.

#StoryBehind

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

Despite having written hundreds of poems, I don't read a lot of poetry. I rarely find anyone that writes the same subjects as I do, that is <