I Wish I Had Known - A Tale Of Childhood Depression Poem by Ernesto Barca

I wish I had known.
Shackles of gloom a bleak mind drags,
With dreams of the future painted on the bare ceiling.
When sleep was refuge,
And unwelcome dawns cast a permanent blanket across the skies.
No light existed in those days.

Every minute a struggle.
Exhausted by wrath.
Every moment maybe my last.
Could hardly think past
The next day to pass
With tears rolling fast
Down my face that was cast
In a skin-tight shell of me.

Innocent ears ache from the chalice of words
Which innocent eyes give life.
Forced through the channel of thoughts and dreams
That brought fear and anger and strife.

I wish I had known
That my life wasn't normal.
That I wasn't normal.
That those who should care can hate.
I wish I had known that my life was not over
That for me, it still wasn't too late.

How vulnerable the single sheep
When from the flock he strays.
How black and white things soon become,
There's me. There's you. There's they.

They point, they curse
With joyous verse
And jagged tongues they sing,
Their tunes they flow like the Styx and yet
Won't protect them from future sting.

Like crushing rocks your gleeful lyrics they smash
My soul into pieces, yet
These lines light to truth will let.
The scars from the shackles haven't healed, and never will
So know that I shall not forget.

I wish I had known how to leave you then
But what I do know now,
Is that in life's journey, those who hate
Will never wear the Crown.