Expect Life To Be Lived…

Even If You Give Up

I dedicate this to Estrelleta “Ezzie” Gardenia

She is the real Fallen Star





When I was a kid life was focused around me. It was almost as if I stopped living so would the world. I felt the world literally “revolved around me”. I now know different. When I was in 6th grade I felt no one cared I was alone. I was an angst ridden teenager who didn’t know how to release my anger in a way that didn’t involve me hitting someone or something. That year is one I will never ever forget, at least not anytime soon.

It was 6th Period Dramatic Writing with Mr. Weems at Thomas Edison Middle School. I was pissed. That morning someone had poured hot coffee on my head and I had gotten pushed into a locker because of two factors my hair and my weight. I had natural hair a.k.a an afro and I was well over the intended weight for a kid my age. I was majorly depressed and never tried to make friends to shy and timid to talk to anyone. Somehow I was blessed to gain some advocates Marquez Johnson, Juwan Frye, and Dahrien Brown. Anyway I had written a poem to share with the class called “Fallen Star” who would have known I was foretelling a future where I met a girl named Estrelleta Gardenia whose first name translates to little star who killed herself after being raped. I knew the poem was good and it carried a message of pain and anger toward those who humiliated me for years. I remember the poem though the paper that it was written on is long gone. It went a little like this:

Fallen Star

There once was a girl destined for greatness but she was lonely. She had no one her name was Star.

When she was five people told her she would be nothing she would never be good enough.

When she was seven she was called fat.

When she was ten she was called ugly.

When she was sixteen she gave up.

When she was in school she was called names and was constantly told these things but before she turned sixteen she cared every word stung like a bullet.

A bullet…

When she turned seventeen she wore all black she never moved, she never cried, she was pale. She was dead all her tormentors were there to see her this way so weak not moving. The people who lead her down this road cried false tears or mourning. She was dead. She was now a real star in the sky looking down, on the little stars like her waiting for them to come home.

When I wrote this I didn’t know what to expect what I didn’t expect is to be dragged to the counselors’ office three hours later. I was sent home with a referral to Youth and family services. I can’t tell you how much I didn’t want to be there. I really believe this incident started my downward spiral toward my troubled teen years. The realization that no one really did care if I lived or died just about killed me. All they did was put me on pills and send me on my way. People kept living while I was miserable. I hated life and everyone in life that was happy

One night long after my life changing day, I took time to evaluate my life and some of the choices I’ve made. I started to think about Columbine High School and the shooting that happened in 1999 a year after I was born. I thought about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the student who fired onto unarmed student and staff wanting revenge for that pain they had suffered in that school. Most people view them as evil and demented. I view them as what should have been a wake-up call…it wasn’t. I can’t help but to think “What happened in to those children? What did those students say to Eric and Dylan to make them commit that horrible crime?” I will never know. I know from my own experience from bulling that sometimes the things people say make you want to do the things those boys did. You want people to feel the pain you felt. Killing people isn’t the way to be heard.

Last year a documentary named Bully was released about bullying in schools across America. This was honestly one of the worst displays of what America is doing WRONG. The really depressing this about this is that schools across the nation BANNED the movie from being viewed in school. After so much protest the movie was rated R so the people that really needed to see it weren’t allowed to. I feel that the most depressing part was about the schools banning it. Why ban it? The cold hard fact is we see this every day. The documentary is nothing new.

But somewhere in America there has been a light turned on against bulling. A mother this year (2013) heard her stepdaughter bulling another girl over her “cheap clothes”. That prompted the mother to go to a thrift shop and buy for her daughter the ugliest clothes she could buy. The girl went to school in those clothes and was teased. The shoe was on the other foot. I can bet you she won’t make that mistake again. A 13-year-old child in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was thrown in to a tree by bullies. The next week he was on Oprah and Dr.Phil. The children who threw him, and kicked him several of whom have juvenile records, have been arrested and charged with a myriad of crimes, including kidnapping, false imprisonment, and reckless endangerment were put in jail. These cases these children’s voices were heard, but not all are so lucky.

Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of teens in America. I see why sometimes the pain isn’t worth living with it’s understandable. Social media give people the idea that the only way to make it through certain things is to either kill yourself or kill others. It’s not. I read a book named Tears of a Tiger by Sharon M. Draper. I’m sorry if I’m spoiling the book but at the end a kid kills himself over guilt over a friend’s death. In Divergent by Veronica Roth a kid jumps in to a chasm over guilt of betraying a friend. I love both of these books, but the reality is some people feel like these characters. No hope, no one to go and talk to. These books may be fiction but some of the situations are real. In the books Divergent when his friends had is funeral they called him brave for killing him. They said he was brave because he was exploring a terrain no one knew about. That is really what some people believe. We need to tell these people the truth and that is that in the end you’re DEAD. No one will remember you after your gone you’re going to rot in the ground. Harsh I know that’s the truth. It is better to believe in yourself than believe in the negative things people tell you. Ugly, fat, skinny, dumb or smart embrace it is who you are love it. I don’t know if this will help anyone I hope it does. Love who you are because if you don’t who will.






Sincerely, Alecsys E