Participation points puncture my soul as if it’s trying to get something out of it
Notecards and name sticks hold knives up to my throat telling me to speak when I obviously can’t
Head down, avoid eye contact, and pray for the best that your name is not the one that escapes their lips
I never want to speak in TOK again
Where I am forced to sit and wait for lunch to come
So I don’t have to speak or discuss or present
But everything slows down in that room
Where the clock ticks by like snails climbing up the window glass
Like me in passing unfortunately inching my way towards her class
I am unable to stop my mind continuing to harass
Saying slow and steady is the first to pass
But alas
I wish I could bypass
These things that prevent me from lying on the grass
Taking in that fresh airy breath
Where I’m not hyperventilating
With my hands held clasp
When breaking down is just within grasp
And you can see my tears drip down my face
Like it’s so relieved to part from my cheek because it’s being polluted from my anxiety and fear
My heart pounds
Ba-dump, Ba-dump, Ba-dump, Ba-dump, Ba-dump
Echoing so fast off of every molecule of my body that it sounds like I got the guys from Best Buy to install surround sound speakers in every nook and cranny of my soul
Actually it’s more like my being because my soul has already ran out of the emergency exit from
being scared half to death
It can’t take the thought of having to pick teams: God bless for working with our partners, but even then my hands still shake, my heart still aches, it feels like my eyes are going to pop out of their sockets and my arms will soon twist around my neck in a desperate attempt to calm my anxious mind
But I am not designed
To be able to control my tendencies of worrying about the responses of others, only being able to see the bleakness of life’s colours, I prick and panic until there’s nothing left to do than to hide under my desolate covers
My words try to escape my lips but instead pile up in my mouth where there’s no other option but to swallow it, but my body, my body is not used to not talking and attempts to regurgitate them back up and I see.
The words in the greenish clumpy goop of disappointment:
I’m sorry
I have anxiety
Please don’t make me talk because if I do I cannot guarantee you that I will still my sanity
This is inhumanity
That my profanity
Is the only thing keeping my urbanity
as high as christianity
Where what was went unsaid is the only thing keeping me from ending up on my death bed
Dead in the depths of my seat watching, waiting for the ring of the bell
TOK will be the death of me
Where socratic seminars are my heart attacks
Class discussions make me a nervous wreck
Where I can’t breathe or yell for help
I have been called a hypocrite poet
but my mind has not given acceptance to the idea of speaking without rehearsal
I somehow wish how I felt was known universal
That I cannot patch my unpieced words together
To create as silky sentences as in my poems but I remind myself that
No one’s judging you
But still my arms still shake with my hands held so tight that my nails pierce blood from my skin and I cry
I cry because I disappoint myself
because I fear failure
because I think of myself as an annoyance
I cry because I’m scared
Scared of being told my anxiety’s an excuse
The words that abuse
Forcing my mind to choose
Their opinions that confuse
Being told it’s a ruse
When in fact it’s my muse
My S.A.D. fuels my despondency
Where my mind attains imagination

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