I recently published my first poetry book in March and I honestly hate reading it sometimes. 

To explain, my book is a collection of poems I have created from the earliest months of 2021 to as recent as March 2023. To put into perspective those are years spanning from my junior and senior years of high school to my first/freshman year of college. 

My book overall touches upon topics of love, heartbreak, sadness, insecurity, self-image, and acceptance. The first portion of my book is very heavy on sixteen/seventeen-year-old Meghan pouring out her heart onto a note because of some boys I wouldn't ever imagine associating with as the girl I am today. 

The obvious portion as to why I possibly can't read the first section is because I'm reading all these feelings and thoughts about boys I was almost borderline obsessed with back then. It's not only embarrassing to recount the state I was put in at the time but also who I was feeling these things for and why. 

Because simply... it was not that serious. 

I know that at that time it was very serious and almost the "end of the world" like to me, but if there is any advice I will be teaching my future children it is that dating in high school is the world's biggest joke. Not only because of how it makes you feel and look when you become a heartbroken, sad, crazy girl, but also because society definitely went too hard on us young girls about being princesses who will have princes one day.

Ultimately, reading my book is like sneaking a glimpse into possibly the worst parts of my young adolescent life. Yet that is what exactly proves the point of my organization of the book: to showcase growth. 

The middle portion of my book doesn't make me cringe as much but almost makes me pity myself in a sense for always having to deal with such negative emotions in the back of my head back then. Not to say I've finally rid myself of all such negativity, but I've definitely learned how to cope with at least some of it better now than before. 

I guess in a sense, to be so open and so vulnerable to whoever chooses to be my audience is really what makes me so embarrassed. When I wrote most of these poems I wasn't writing them expecting a whole class in front of me to be listening. It's like crying in public. 

In a sense, I guess that is why artists are so unable to love the works that so many adore. 

We are too busy picking apart the flaws to recognize how much it must mean to someone else who can't be vulnerable in the ways we have.