Dear Unsealed,
As a young child I was diagnosed with what they called a “lazy eye.” I was only three or 4 or 5. Those toddler Esotropia runs in families and usually requires surgery to correct. Acquired esotropia occurs in children usually between the ages of 2 and 5. Eyeglasses can usually correct it. seem to conjugate into one perimeter of I was too young to begin wearing glasses.
My mom had surgery on her eye, not mine. I found out later in life when my mom was alive. She explained to me that she could not deal with it, so she had surgery instead of me. I was deeply hurt as I was young and dealing with bullying not her as a grown woman. I loved my mom and always will but that hurt deeply. I learned to forgive her and move on without anger and buy more frames to accompany my wardrobe.
I told my mom I could not see well and was embarrassed about my left eye because the kids were making fun of my disability. My mom was incredibly sad as she had the same eye ailment. We can see but need glasses.
At three, four, and five I was a gregarious spontaneous combustion running around the house, playing with my Kachina dolls, my baby dolls, my mudpies and least of all of these was pretending that the toads were my friends. I was an adventurous child of sorts, and my glasses were in the way, but what was really in the way was I could not see well without my glasses. So, my glasses became a part of my wardrobe, and I had to learn to fit my glasses into my daily routine of trees, toads, and Kachina dolls.
The truth is that the significance of learning to respect and wear my glasses taught me survival and how cruel young toddlers can be. My favorite little boy on the block in our 1950s neighborhood was accepting of my disability. Back in those days people who wore glasses were called four eyes. That is a debilitating bigotry condition of certain types of personalities of certain human beings. I learned to go with the flow. My grandpa Boss was with me teaching me to read and write and music.
Those days are gone now.
I remember a little girl who was so sweet.
I remember a little girl who was so neat.
I remember a little girl who was me,
To be
Grown one day,
Along the way
As I was now a 21-year-old young lady growing up in the crazy seventies entering college after nursing school at age 19. I had a pair of frames to match every outfit in my closet.
Later I began to wear contacts mixing it up with different frames and lots of sunshades.
Now at 75, I am wearing contacts again mixing them up with different frames and reading glasses and computer glasses.
Old habits are a positive virtue in the case of a young toddler beginning to wear glasses to see carrying on to an elder age.
I now look back.
React,
To my younger self of creative play.
Today
I still suffer from lazy left eye syndrome, strabismus, astigmatism, and far-sightedness but hey folks I am human, and we are all with disabilities of some kind. We are human.
As an artist, writer, lyricist and elder I thank the Universe for supplying me with perseverance, longevity, patience, and intellectual capabilities that have helped me continue walk my life path.
To someone else reading this who might say it is no big deal, it is a big deal to a toddler and to humanity that has given humans the ability and ambition to overcome obstacles as they walk their path in their life.
My glasses and contacts are woven together into a web of sight and creativity overcoming the obstacles of a toddler in the 1950s era of bigotry and judgmental style cultures of America at that time.
The learning concave ability of learning to live with strabismus or “crossed eyes”. I had one crossed eye, and I grew up overcoming my disability by wearing many different frames. However, the stigma of bullying that was present in those days has left a scar inside my intellect that I still have to work through with my therapist.
However, I am over the four eyes syndrome bullying. I love my glasses and can shop online and offline looking at cool frames to offset my wardrobe.

Things have been hard, but that’s okay
We are reaching brighter days
Innocence stolen, you’ll soon understand
Your thoughts will scatter like shells in sand
Getting older is very hard
You’ll find yourself getting scarred
You’ll lose yourself, find her again
You’ll lose and gain different friends
But through it all, it does get better
Always think about brighter weather
You’ll be okay, I promise you this
Lots of scars, but eventual bliss

Sweet meek mouse
You refuse to let out a peep
Afraid of what will reap
Your mind shouts
You won’t let it out
Kept hidden beneath your silent weeps
The chaos in your mind begins to creep
Finding the need to express yourself
You awaken from your cocoon
A withered violet finally in bloom
Rising with the morning sun
A magical soul with a story to tell
Your words will be heard
You’re no longer stuck in your shell

I cry most nights thinking I’m not good enough for this world. I make myself believe that I’m not worthy enough to be loved or cared for. I feel like I’m in quicksand and I can’t get out or that I’m under water and the pressure is pulling me in and I can’t get out. Maybe that’s why I never learned how to swim because I’m scared of not getting out. I hid my depression since I don’t remember when I gotten really good at faking a smile and showing people I’m ok but in reality I’m not, I’m scared to disappoint because I never heard anyone say they are proud of me, I’m scared to love because I never gotten pure love from anyone not a friend, significant other, sibling, or parent it was always tough love because I was taught that being truly loved always becomes a disaster. I hear my parents arguing everyday since I was little it never stopped only gotten worse once I fully grown up, I never realized until now how broken my parents are and how they project it on me, how my mom belittles me and later argues because it gives her power over me the words and tone she represents she knows affects me and she likes it, she’s a force. My dad is just a narcissist who likes to control and throw out people, who not only couldn’t take care of his family but he was the main to break us. I guess that’s where my brother learned it from the uncontrollable range and using then throwing out people. I feel like a stranger in my own home. I don’t belong here. I cry most nights in the bathroom. I don’t tell anyone because I don’t want to be a burden. I think about how life became after a while and how broken I am. I just want to leave and start new. The anxiety and depression that has happened over the years I don’t think it would stop not until I make a change, I used to cry for my mother’s love, crave my father’s affection, expect my brother to support but that was never the case with them I don’t want to be like them ever I want to be better. I am in quicksand that’s only getting worse and worse, I dream about being underwater or having broken teeth, my anxiety takes over and there’s nothing I can do about it. Uncontrollable breath, lungs getting tighter, head pounding, hands shaking. I can’t ask for help from my own family because they think it’s a phase and it’ll be over but it’ll only be over once I’m gone. The black hole I carry in my mind sucks all good in my life and I let it be how stupid of me. The silent panic attacks I get from time to time shows how much stress I’m in and I can’t stop myself. The distraction I cause doesn’t even work. It’s hard to do so in a household of toxicity. One bedroom, broken handles, crippling walls, I don’t even have a room for privacy, parents yelling in front of me, brother nowhere to be seen for fifteen years not even a “hi how you doing” I’m tired of everything I just want to leave and start new. I cry most nights in silence so no one can hear me. I bottle up everything because I rather hurt myself than hurt someone else. I know it’s wrong to do either. I just wish it gets better sooner than when it’s too late. I hope to overcome and escape this nightmare and see some light shed soon.

I’d always believed that if I shared blood with a vulture
Then surely I was just like them;
The ones that slip beneath the surface and devour you
Before you are dead
Because surely, if they can’t have patience
Then I must be a monster too.

But now that we know that true vultures don’t engage in torture
And feed their lust by feeding off the innocent
This is no circle of life, it is a cycle of hell.

True vultures eat the deceased, so they cannot be monsters
And you aren’t one either,
The mistakes that you made were paved by fate
And while they are stains already made,
It is not a adultery to your kind
To love the vultures for who they are,
and hating the monsters for what they’re not,
Nor loving yourself, for being a true vulture.

Something I’ve learned
Is that Sometimes I think I’m cursed, Because there’s this shadow that follows me. 

That most would consider an inevitability, but to me it’s a fiend, 

An enemy that would take my innocence away from me, similar to the destruction of Helene in my home of western NC

Death.
It all started with my mother, when I was just a kid,
My little worried eyes watched as she slowly got more sick Though we didn’t understand,
her death, unplanned, she knew when she’d go,
So she wrote us all letters to let us all know,

 … she loved us, And we finally knew when we saw her coffin on the stand,

She was an unlucky one.
this was just the beginning of our family being undone,
death our constant companion from day one.

Its unfortunate but most men in my family die young, 
I watched helplessly as my brother became one. 

Thinking he was invincible as he flirted with death,The somber silence of hearing as the phone rung,
a call we hoped never to get.

we are the ones always riding behind the hearse,

I had to sit by and watch my grandmother cry, wishing she wasn’t alive,as she had seen another of her angels die
.
Because I was left Helpless to bring back the dead,
wishing in my head, that it could of been me instead, 

like life the cycle only started over again. Things stayed tough, 

Because as if we hadn’t been through enough,
we were barely able to grieve for those we loved…

My grandmother hiding the family Bible, saying it was bad luck, all the names and death dates written in the front.

I was home four days from school
hoping to enjoy the summer sun,
When death …claimed another one.

This time it was my uncle,
my grandmother’s youngest son,
only in his fifties.
His heart was not up to snuff
he fell,
Because the woman with him,
left him without help, to die by himself.

For us to find where he’d lain those four days,
The smell still makes me sick to this day
a month later my aunt too passed away following my uncle to the grave.
Another fallen one, Another cursed son,
More fear of who will be the next to come.

Cursed through life to always live and worry who’s next to die.