Hilltop
What do you do when everything you were told was a lie?
Brainwashed till you no longer fought or tried.
Isolated, up on the top of that hill.
The lies you were told play in your mind still.
Convinced that the end of the world was near.
Captured in the paranoia that lives here.
Raised to fight and fend on my own.
Taught to believe this was the world I had known.
“We live on top of the mountain so we have an advantage.
They will come for us, ready for the kill.
Be prepared, we will snipe them off of the hill.”
It wasn’t madness, it was all I had ever known.
This is the environment from which I was grown.
Raised to throw a punch and see the sights on a gun.
Have the willpower to stand and not run.
Be prepared for a life-threatening circumstance.
Don’t succumb to any form of hindrance.
Be prepared for the world is at means,
“To come to all of this by the time you’re sixteen.”
Many will die and many will leave.
You have to stay strong no matter how much you bleed.
We will be prepared for this fight.
Just make sure to look for God’s light.
Then one day, everything changed.
I was taken out of the unruly and untamed.
Placed in a life, that all of you know.
In a life, where normal people did grow.
I looked around, silent and stunned.
Everything I knew, everything I had done.
I learned that people didn’t see their future with the barrel of a gun.
We were kids, meant to play and have fun.
To get an education, have some school pride.
Not contemplate how you might die.
Even years later I find myself still,
Contemplating the hell up on that hill.
And even now I have to try,
To remind myself that life is more than “survive”.
I often find that I struggle to see,
The meaning that life could have ahead of me.
I have to remind myself to be kind,
To find meaning in the new life, to try.
I sit on the floor and often contemplate,
How this all affected my mental state.
As slow realization hits me with it’s gravity,
Searching for what life is meant to be.
