Bleeding Rainbows

Bleeding Rainbows

 

Jennifer Pickup, 16.08.2024

 

I’ve had many labels stuck on me,

But wearing them always has been with pride;

‘One of a kind’, I’m ‘different’, ‘quirky’…

Find it hard to get people on my side.

 

I’ve never wanted to be ‘normal’,

Always happy to stand out in a crowd;

Never needed to make it formal,

No diagnoses that could cast a cloud.

 

Career change led to knowledge gleaning,

When I started studying ‘special needs’;

Those labels start to grow new meaning,

Now I’m chasing a rainbow ‘til it bleeds.

 

How much of this is learnt behaviour?

How much of it is passed down in the genes?

Daddy, I’ve got so much to ask you;

Just how much of you can you see in me?

 

Can I do myself one huge favour?

Can I re-evaluate being me?

Daddy, I’ve got so much to tell you;

How I wish you were still down here with me.

 

Some things that I do seem obvious,

Because my brain works in a certain way;

I was happily oblivious,

Until others noticed and had their say.

 

How much of it is in my nature?

How much is me just emulating you?

I think I’d be prepared to wager,

That the balance is rather nurture skewed.

 

Now in those labels lurks a danger,

For I keep seeing them misunderstood;

This path keeps growing ever stranger!

You can do far more harm than you do good.

 

How much of this is learnt behaviour?

How much of it is passed down in the genes?

Daddy, I’ve got so much to ask you;

I’m still trying to work out what it means.

 

If only I can be a saviour,

If only I can smooth the way for them…

Daddy, I’ve got so much to tell you;

How I wish you were here not in Heaven.

 

Lately I have a new perspective,

For the more I learn the more I can see;

Why are all the words so negative?

Why is it called ‘learning difficulty’?

 

‘Spectrum’, ‘Deficit’, ‘Syndrome’, ‘Delay’,

‘Condition’, ‘Disorder’, and ‘Special Needs’;

Sound so damning these words that we say,

And still that far-elusive rainbow bleeds.

 

I wish you’d try to understand me,

If only you’d embrace the way I think;

When you use these words to contain me,

My whole world stops and it begins to shrink.

 

How much of this is learnt behaviour?

How much of it is passed down in the genes?

Daddy, I’ve got so much to ask you;

For nothing now is quite the way it seems.

 

So I will make myself be braver,

I will fight to set rainbow children free!

Daddy, I’ve got so much to tell you;

How I wish you’ll be proud of what you see.