You don’t know what it’s like to be poor
To come home to an empty pantry and live on instant ramen every day until your mama gets her next paycheck
And even then the moneys gotta go to the bills.
The credit card bills, the phone bills, the electric bills, the gas bills, the insurance bills, the car payments, and the mortgage.
To have your mama curl into a ball and cry in shame at night all by herself because she has to take money from her children’s future in order to feed them today.

You don’t know what it’s like to be all alone
To think about who would come to your funeral and nobody comes to mind.
To not know for sure if God is really on your side when you hide from a world that makes you cry on the inside and makes you just want to die.

You don’t know what it’s like to have the world against you
To have no one there to pick you up when you get pushed down.
When you got life whispering in your ear to give up but you can’t give up because you were taught from the moment you came out of your mother’s womb and into this cold hard world that only the weak give up and you are not weak and you won’t give up no matter who tells you to
Whether it’s your friends your family your teachers your home your life your world and even God.
Even if God told you to give up and just let fate trample over your back that is brittle with work and perseverance, you gotta just stand right back up and brush the dirt off of you because the only one who can and will let you give up is yourself.

You don’t know what it’s like to love
To take a leap into a chasm of doubt, risking either being caught into an abyss of either complete trust or complete betrayal.
To have someone drink the words of passion right from your mouth rather than try to let you explain it because everyone knows you can’t analyze and explain true happiness
To feel like you belong somewhere after wandering the desert of hate for so long, only to stumble upon the oasis of acceptance without even looking for it.

You don’t know what it’s like to have to choose
But maybe if you walked a mile in my shoes, you’d be able to relate to the people that surround you.
The ones that appear on the news
The ones that have nothing left to lose
The ones that still have something they gotta prove
The ones that not just sing but embrace the blues
Then, maybe then, you’d know what it’s like.