"Different"

"You're just different. That's why people don't like you."

She sat motionless and let the girl repeat the stingy words. She just listen.

"You can't change who you are. You brag to much, you can't afford to do what we do and no one likes a tag-a-long."

You're stupid. You're ugly. You're poor. You lack any redeemable talent.....She knew that she had been and always would be, "that kid" in the neighborhood. And as she watched her own, bounce out to the street to get in on a game of pick up basketball, and watched the kids silently slink away to play at another hoop, she knew, she'd passed it on to her own kids.

She knew how to "fit in" so that this wouldn't happen. A social and religious straight jacket. Put it on, smile and pretend to happy and when the urge to commit suicide from following rules that didn't fit, overwhelms you, just continue on your merry way. You're the only fool who feels like that and no one cares what you think, or how you feel. They just want you to smile and conform. You're easier to deal with that way.

The straight jacket is to small, so, she just sat down and cried. Cried for her child left holding the ball, cried for her kids who have to pay for her behavior. Cried for the narrow-minded seeds walking away and the source that would water them the rest of their lives.

It isn't fair. It's life. Some days, it sucks.