Self-Imagined Resilience Poem by Skylark Woodrow

You are wrong.
You say that I am not strong; but weak,
But that is only because you don't know what strength is.
You think that to be strong you have to be tough, hard, unbreakable.
You have to fight, win, dominate,
Break down all that surrounds you until you are all that is left...standing triumphant.
According to those standards I am not strong;
I am weak, because you see kindness as a weakness.
You see kindness as something that you can crush in an instant,
Something fragile and easily broken.
But how much strength does it take to remain gentle and kind in a world that seeks to break you and turn you into something you're not?
You can fight, win, dominate,
Break down all that surrounds you, until you are all that is left.
But your self-imagined resilience deceives you;
You have not become strong,
You have been whittled down until there was nothing left but a monster.
In the face of a world that seeks to break me, I have chosen to remain kind.
I have chosen to not let my pain shape who I will become.
I have chosen to try to not let my pain hurt those around me.
I know that to fight, win, dominate, you have to break, crush, and destroy;
And when you stand triumphant, you stand atop the remains of those whom you sacrificed for you to get to where you are.
I have chosen to grow and become, despite my pain, rather than to be transformed by it;
I have chosen to be stronger than the pain, because I have seen what happens when the pain wins.

(2019.7.28)