Slow/Fast by Valerie Parente
They think I’m slow
in the head
because it takes a moment
to comprehend
but these thoughts
are too fast
as I’m running
from the past.
So many obstacles
in the way
on rapid fire
in this brain.
My mind is not vacant,
you see,
it’s just overwhelmed
at this speed.
– Valerie Parente (6-24-2022)
Make Sense of It by Valerie Parente
I saw my teacher speaking,
I saw the words on the paper,
but I couldn’t make sense of it.
I knew it wasn’t a foreign language,
but it damn near felt like it.
I tried and I tried,
I read the same pages as everyone else,
but when it came to discussing the chapter,
I missed everything they talked about.
Peers scoffing that I didn’t understand what I read,
teachers scolding, thinking I didn’t read at all,
peers moving on to honors without me,
teachers announcing that I was lazy.
This isn’t a pity party,
this is processing a processing issue,
that went on for so long undiagnosed,
and I just want to understand,
why it was so hard to make sense of it.
Now it all makes sense,
why I struggled in the way that I did.
Starving my brain certainly didn’t help,
but it felt like a just punishment for being the “dumb friend”.
Developing obsessions certainly didn’t help,
but it felt damn good to understand something inside out.
They said this was about intelligence,
they said I was just stupid,
but I didn’t feel stupid,
I felt like I was trying to make sense of sound with sight,
like I was reading a language foreign to mine,
like I was going through the motions blind,
like I was faking it all the Goddamn time.
Well I’m a writer now,
I make art your class can talk about,
I excel at university with essays,
I write books, I write articles,
and guess what? I get paid.
This isn’t a bragging session,
this is finding comfort in that it was never about intellect,
and I just want to understand,
why full grown adults who were supposed to help,
couldn’t make sense of it.
– Valerie Parente (4-12-2021)
Being Abnormal by Valerie Parente
It’s just lonely…
when you’re not allowed to express pain
because you’re the mentally ill girl who can’t be taken seriously,
when you’re not allowed to drive the freeway
because no one has faith in the skills you’ve achieved,
when you’re not allowed to paint your face
because you never give in to a normal level of intimacy,
when you’re not allowed to respond to hate
because defending your mental state is a luxury,
when you’re not allowed to remember heartbreak
because normal people don’t take this long to grieve,
when you’re not allowed to cut to the chase
because only crazy people act with so much honesty.
It just gets kind of lonely inside my brain
when even your loved ones can’t understand how you operate,
because I know that my honest-to-God pain only frustrates,
adding a whole new layer to what should be normal heartbreak.
I guess what I’m trying to say
is that ordinary things like a broken heart or a common sickness
are a lot harder to cope with when you have a mental illness
because people always have a million rational reasons for why you’re incorrect
but your hyper-sensitive mind has never been dictated by such logic.
– Valerie Parente (10-9-2020)
I Can’t Do The Math by Valerie Parente
I’m not good at the logical stuff
and I’m kind of sick of things not adding up.
Because all the things that should make sense
wind up harder and harder to comprehend.
It’s starting to feel like forever
I’ve been putting piece and piece together
but I can’t do the math at hand
when I’m the only one trying to understand.
– Valerie Parente (5-29-2020)
valerieparente 