Getting here has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done
This life is not for the faint-hearted and I’m just glad to be sitting here writing this little poem
I remember all the obstacles that have been placed in my way
The days at school when the last thing on my mind was education
Back then it was all about survival and avoiding the bullies who wanted me dead
It all started so long ago now I can barely recollect
But I remember being made to walk up and down the classroom by an old teacher who wanted to cure me of my in-step
There was another time a kid I never really liked grabbed my pen and pad and threw it in the pond telling me that our kind shouldn’t be doing things like that
Secondary school wasn’t much better, the bullies were bigger and there were more of them
But somehow I survived, escaped intact by taking them on at their own game
Living so close to school I got all the training the one-hundred metres champion would need
Beating the bullies, even when they brought their bikes, home in a blur of limbs and will to survive
After school I naturally became a Goth thinking that was maybe the way to get people to ignore me
But that seemed unlikely in retrospect, a six-foot beanpole of a lad dressed head to toe in black
Just made it more obvious that I wasn’t like them and whilst now I may dress differently my spirit remains undiminished
Forever until the very end will I remain the one who is simply not like them.