Doubt is a Seed

I told them I was leaving Stout
I was going to live in my room
Showed up with a legal contract
I was going to pay rent

They looked at me
With that look of scorn and disappointment
That I have become so used to

I got accepted to a school in New York
I told them I was going
It was my only way out

Summer 2007
Was even worse than '06
I felt like a prisoner
21 years old in a first-ring suburb
Skyline in the backyard

Alas I had no driver's license
Yes I failed the damn test four times
But I should have done that at 16
Not 20

They will never understand my anger
They will never know what it did to me
Demeaned and dehumanized
I am just oversensitive and whiny
And such an asshole
I get it

I will get over it someday
That when I was 16 and on Paxil
My mother had to win the game of Scratch My Back
It is what it is

A week before I left
My father asked me
"Are you even excited to go?"
I told him no
But that I had to

Doubt is a seed
When it gets planted
It spurts like an angry plant

My first months in New York City
I was all alone
In the most literal sense

No one to wake me up
And I was missing school
Couldn't find a job
I was trying but not hard enough

They said I was sad and pathetic
That I was squandering a very good thing
That I better get my shit together
Because you cant do anything without a degree these days

I regrouped and re-evaluated
Decided that I wanted it
Talked to an advisor
Faced the music
Fixed the situation

Enter Loretta
"You should move to Uptown Minneapolis"
"You are just playing house"
"Are you doing this for the right reasons"

And the seeds
Continue to be planted

I wish I could go for one week
Knowing what it is I want
Just seven days
Of knowing for certain

Whatever is done
Must be done for me
And no one else

I told her to stop paying the rent
Even though I have no money
I have to find a way to do it

Because it's not working