They told me I was wasting time
When I could just beg for change
While I sat at the computer
Writing poems for a page
That had yet to exist, you see
I’d not yet found the strength
To give my writing to the world
I’d not yet found my wings
But I knew that day would come
And I knew the time would go
And I knew my way with words
Would help me find a home
I’d been living on the streets
For two years by that time
And for every heartache I found a way
To make another rhyme
While they were out there changing nothing
About the way they lived their lives
I was sitting in a library
Writing words about the whys
Building something for my future
For the future of my son
Determined to escape all that
I let my ink just run
While they were laughing at me
And calling me a fool
I turned the pain to poetry
And made my pen a tool
Now look at me, a decade later
With two books that bear my name
And a following I’d not imagined
When they were calling me insane
I’ve made every dream I had come true
And some I’d dared not dream
In those days of darkest nights
When I had not one thing
That I could call my own, except
My notebook and a pen
A million heavy heartbreaks
And one or two good friends
While those that called me crazy
Are still in the same place
Or laying underneath the ground
Just a name without a trace
Of anything they used to be
Because they refused to change
While their crazy was addiction
And they called my crazy strange
They thought I was delusional
But it was something I could see
In some distant future
It was waiting there, for me
So let this be a lesson
Look at me standing tall
In the center of the kingdom
That I built from something small
Don’t let them tell you differently
If you have a dream for you
Give it everything you’ve got
And make that dream come true.
~Mandy Kocsis©2023~

Prompt: write something from the view of yourself 10 years ago.