Girlfriend Party
& Poetry
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cause we all got a poem that ought to be read...
by: Christy Sholola
copyright 2002
I knew you during the Spring of your life. You were lively, ambitious, talented, carefree, and compassionate. You told me you wanted to help others�to live a life devoted to caring for and caring about someone�other than yourself.
You promised to do something�be it ever so minute�to make a difference in, to have a positive impact on your family, your people, and your community. We believed in you. We trusted you during your season of change.
I knew you during the Summer of your life when others recognized your spectacular gifts, your unique talents, and your unmatched intellect. They hailed your great accomplishments and pushed you to great, incredible, and unimaginable heights of fame and wealth. Others sensed what we already knew�you were a visionary with a desire to help people achieve.
You reminded me that you wanted to and needed to help others�to help us and teach us to help ourselves. �Where there is no vision, a people, a community, and an individual all die an agonizing death.� With those parting words from you, we waited patiently for a sign�some sign, some actions resulting from those illustrious visions and dreams you spoke of with such passion. But nothing happened. Again, we waited, and we waited, and we waited.
Instead of planting seeds of hope with our shared vision, you suddenly changed your direction and became very shortsighted and very agitated when we expressed concerns. Within a few months, you abruptly uprooted and tainted every dream our small family and community had ever cherished. Others said our hopes and dreams had become like hot sand in the searing heat of the desert� untouchable�you couldn�t wait to get away from our dreams and us. We had become distant, unpleasant memories for you. You had become greedy and self-absorbed. But, we believed in you. We trusted you during another season of change.
I knew you during the Autumn of your life, when your fame and wealth began to slowly decay, rapidly decline, and then totally disappear, leaving you to wonder what had gone wrong. What rungs on the ladder of success did you miss or stumble over in your relentless climb to success? You wracked your brain day and night, trying to recall every detail of your life-- every person, every thought, every word, every gesture, every action, every conversation that paved the road to your success. You were convinced there was a misstep along the way�you must have said or done something to someone for things to suddenly go so wrong.
You tried to comfort your bruised ego and your wilted, crumbling dreams by blaming others for your diminished stature. For a time, this helped you to rationalize the sudden flight of friends and money. You were in a desperate search to find hope and a reason to live. We tried to find you to talk to you�to remind you that you always had us. We wanted to remind you of the vision and to tell you how much we believed in you and trusted you. But, you didn�t want to see us and you didn�t want to talk to us. Instead you sent us an impersonal letter, informing us you wanted nothing more to do with us because we hindered your progress, cramped your style, suffocated your personal drive, and reminded you of the nothing you used to be--your early beginnings, your untapped dreams�your disappointments and failures. But now you were somebody: someone known by somebody other than us and you wanted it to stay that way.