Don'T Call Me Doll Face Poem by Julie Park

If you want to play, you go buy yourself a silly doll.
My mania is not for your arts and entertainment.
Why do you think I have to erect these high, stone walls.
Don’t think my last name is Park for your amusement.

Just when it seems that I might begin to raise up the walls,
At the same time I will be tearing down as up & down doesn’t end.
I will build the walls taller; doctors, they’ll try to shrink my thoughts smaller.
They do not know now and they never will begin to understand.

Is it trendy, this thinking out of the box?
Who said the World is the box we think out of?
I think in, around and about all that there is.

When my thoughts come at my mind, pushing.
My mind comes at my thoughts, shoving.
When I hear others scream in anger
I refer to them simply, as, “darling”.

I do dream that I could be “like everybody”.
I also wish that I could think “like everybody”.
It’s not that I’m boring or
That I really choose not to think clear.

I don’t know how to “act” with anybody.
I know I live differently than most anybody.
I’m a wallflower wearing a lampshade at life’s party
Pandora holds the key as to why I am here.

I do not truthfully know myself.
For a day could I honestly be somebody else.
It would be so much easier than being stuck inside of me.
My emotions are shaken and turned into terror
I think I get through life by trial and error
I’m being held prisoner by an invincible disease.

Some guys, they just assume they can call me Doll face.
My suggestion to them is: invest in a toy.
These dude's; they need to stay out of my personal space
I don’t need to be manipulated and destroyed.

Do not do me any special favors, please.
Don't text me or write me or call.
In fact, do this one thing for me.
Pretend you never met me at all.

Here I am and I feel this may be a pretend way to be alive.
This really is but it’s also kind of not how I feel.
I don’t know how I feel I know this, and I don’t know why
It is a chaotic yet somehow confused calm that seems real.

For me, I cannot comprehend yours,
or any other way.
But, I have tried or mostly had those ways
all tried on me.

To find a cure; to make it through another night;
another day.
The doctors treat me as a guinea pig; using my mind
for nefarious deeds.


They're twisting my brain as I color pages black in a book.
It’s all the colors of my thoughts; how I feel that I must look
It won’t show up in pictures or the photos that you took
This manic depressive illness has deceiving ways and is often overlooked

If you're good, I might make you a necklace inside a box.
I won't even need to think outside of it.
As I shuffle back and forth by the door that is,
All ways, and is always locked.
I long for someone to understand the language of this

Hey, there Doll Face? Are they speaking to me?
Yes, guys always look at the outside first...right?
If it all appears pretty, then assume she’s alright, she must be.
But inside I’m crying as I battle silently for my life.

Yes, I've always been up the creek without a paddle.
And yes...I have always almost drowned.
But someone also has always caught me, thus far.
I will paint my smile on and appear happy, just like a clown.

Everybody will point at me and everybody will make fun of me.
If I have a balloon for them then they may, or maybe will not.
Do I give them a reason to laugh at me? I wasn’t really trying, you see.
But people laugh when I walk in or out of a room. At what! ?

I guess that I will laugh last.
I know that I cried first.
I’ll probably die laughing.
I bet I’ll laugh crying in the...

The beginning of the end,
or the end of the beginning?
And then I get to go, right?
Am I first or am I last;
does the door open or does life shut?

It isn’t easy to be you.
Blind to how it is I see
If you spent a day in my head,
No longer blind would you be.

You could finally see and you would finally hear
Which would make you think and make you feel
Just a taste of what it’s like to be me; maybe more aware
It just might bring to life the Doll Face you thought was so real.

What it’s like to be me
There are too many ways to describe
You’d really have to live it, though
To understand that I live each day and I die

I will only laugh along with you
Even as you are really laughing at me
But funny isn’t what you’d find
If you lived a day in my life, you don’t see.

Don’t Call me doll face.
Just overlooking the obvious.
I’ll leave without a suitcase
No need to be adventurous

Been there. Done that. Every day.
Though, repeating things, I always learn.
The End Is Near, Ziggy’s cartoon would say.
Every day, the End Is Near, I really learned.

I’ve hurt them, too.
As in, I’ve hurt myself.
How could anybody love me?

I live in such a beautiful world.
My life is such the perfect and pretty hell.
I die perfectly, again to live a die every day.

I exist in fear of every single thing.
I can’t die, I wish. So, I guess I’ll stay.
It’s just too bad that so long ago
My mind started to turn and twisting
I lost myself, Me, somewhere along the way.

Now, that somebody is me.
I didn’t wish for this.
Can’t I get off of this clever Park ride?
Looks can truly deceive.
Am I not the answer to your wish?
Don’t call me Doll Face; as I laugh at you in front and in back I cry.

Don’t call me Doll Face.