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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Writer’s Block

Amanda Trudeau Shadle Park

Untitled

We are not understood.

We are not educated.

We are no longer people.

We are a label.

We are the nerds, the popular crowd, the whiners, the hackers, the losers, tha’ gangsta’s, the stoners, the slackers, the pot-heads.

We are the sad and confused, the lonely and depressed.

We are the illegitimate, the accidents, the failures.

We are the irresponsible ones.

We are the ones who sit and watch what goes on around us, without responding.

We cannot tear ourselves away from our screens.

We glue our eyes to the monitors, unable to be distracted by the meaningless happenings of the “real world.”

We are the ones who don’t try; don’t care. But we are also the ones who don’t agree with these assumptions, these stereotypes, these labels.

We ARE the care givers, the thinkers, valedictorians.

We are the politicians, environmentalists, psychoanalysts, the neurologists.

We are the creators of hope: the ones who will cure AIDS and cancer and the common cold.

We are the ones who will attempt to erase the errors of the past.

We are not the ones who refuse to acknowledge mistakes, for we are living in the aftermath of others as we speak.

We may be what they call mistakes, blunders, foul-ups, but we are also the healers and the inventors and the blue-collar workers.

And someday we will be different, yet we will still be the same.

All of these things we are, and will be, for we are many and we are many things.

We are frustration.

We are the now.

And most importantly, we are the future.

xxxx