For context, I went to a highly conservative, white, private(ish), Catholic school in Wichita, Kansas. And this poem was written and published the day after Donald Trump's election (11/9/2016)

This was the largest and first step into really growing into who I am today. I played the social game in high school pretty religiously. In a world where racial slurs ring out every other sentence (myself included to... fit in), and the all consuming social game is heavily dependent on fitting in, this poem was my first real attempt to be what I really felt.

I posted this on my own twitter and god the response was so fucking stupid. I expected some people to be like "What the fuck bro this is so stupid, what are you doing?" or "This dumb ass liberal that has no idea how the world works" or some stupid shit of the like. But this shit followed me into every single class. The whole school heard about it. People would mention it every class, I was called into the principals office multiple times for interrogation and teachers would give me their opinions about my opinions. I knew we were conservative here, but sheesh.

It was a poem for fucks sake. My peers and some teachers gave me so much shit, calling me a pussy and shaming me and telling me to just go write a poem if I ever had a problem, or whatever. But there were some quiet souls that identified heavily with what I had to say and they let me know. Not as some pseudo-righteous poetry bro or anything, but this really solidified my will to give people permission to feel and be different by doing so myself—publicly.

I don't know. Maybe I'm thinking too much into it. Maybe the people that told me that they were grateful and really appreciated the beauty of the poem were just trying to console a b-list jock who had just committed social suicide. Maybe it was all just friendly jest. Maybe people just loved sharing their opinions about Donald Trump and conservatism and white supremacy, and I was now an obvious person to target such vocalizations. Maybe it was never ever that deep at all.

Whatever, poetry is great. This is such a stupid and small problem looking back. But this one changed my life.