The meaning of life....

Where does it end... 

We no longer know where it started. The world is unrecognisable. 

Growing up most of us cried coz we thought we were too skinny, or too ugly or too shy to get the one we crushed on. Fighting to fit into a bra, or football boots, everything was too pale, too expensive, too far to walk too.....

That playground group of pretty girls we longed to join, the boys we fancied who tripped us up and laughed, the nuns who silently murdered us with a look when 2 went into 8 seven times....

Nowadays we've forgotten the pain of not having, yet having enough. Starved we thought we were, useless we believed ourselves to be, and important we thought it all was. At 13 us girls prayed for boobs, while boys prayed the day would come they'd see them and not faint at the reality. At 15 we got the bra, the boys got the boots and at 17 none of us how any of it worked.... We wanted to fit in, fit into a world we didn't realise was simple, easy, unique...

Mothers cleaned and cooked, Fathers came home and put us kids in our place after a day of running mothers ragged. We raged against the system, safe in our beds, in our heads and slept content knowing it was all in our heads... and we didn't need guns or fury to belittle the parents that dared to care for us and smack our arse to pull us into line when we fashioned to cross it...

Today, we long for yesterday, for simplicity

Today we no longer know what will happen at every tick of the clock that winds our lives down

And the result.....

A child covers herself in the blood of the dead so she can live... and she has to live with that

A man declares war on another country and those displaced have to live with that in another country 

Old men in suits decide the unborn have a bigger right to life than those hiding under tables crying to live

Flying to space is a privilege granted to those who can afford to watch those denied an honest living 

Our beautiful elderly were watched as they died behind glass we should have smashed to hold them in their last moments

And everyday we forget each other, forget how to touch, how to love, how to forgive 

And everyday we forget that we remember how things used to be, when life was simple, easy, unique 

Will we ever remember to live like that again, before it's too late.....

Valerie Masters