Life is not always easy,
life is not always peaceful,
life is not always what
you want it to be -
because the truth, for so many,
is that life is incredibly,
sometimes unbarely,
hard, in every respect:
so many people live in places,
and around people,
that have seemingly given up
on trying to restore how a place once was
and return it to a state of contentment
that was once felt.

Every day, people wake up
and they ask themselves
how they ended up where they awoke:
on the streets, or in a home
without some of the things
that some people take for granted,
perhaps without their family,
without hope, without love,
and for so long that they have forgotten
the last time they saw anything
resembling "normality" -
because the state of hell
that they believe they live in
day in and day out
has become all that they know.

We all know how to laugh,
we all know how to cry -
but sometimes when we
lose so much, so soon,
we do not immediately know
how to feel, nor what to think,
and we need to take some time
to rediscover who we are.

We all know what it is like
to feel as if we are happier
than we have ever been in our life  -
and then "BOOM!" the world we knew
is destroyed by an explosion of reality,
and after which nothing and no one
can return, nor remember clearly,
to a time before whatever happened happened.

We all spend a lot of our time
trying to convince ourselves
that something will endure forever -
and then we all have to some day
face the truth that we never want to acknowledge:
that life can sometimes feel
as if it is a series of battles
being fought in some kind
of never-ending war.

Life is complicated...
life is not always
what we make of it...
life is always surprising us...
life is a gift, as are people;
however, sometimes
some people use others
for their own gain
and over time they start to see people
as if they are figures on a chart,
and not human beings
with emotions and feelings...
life is what it is,
individuals are who they are -
and no matter what anyone, or anything,
wants to make you believe,
nobody should be put others
through things because they can,
nor because someone is more "resilient",
because people are not machines
and do not deserve to be treated like they are,
because we are all flesh and blood,
and not variables in someone else's formula;
I am not a prisoner,
I am not a number -
and neither does anyone have to be
if they don't want to be.