Some people would never think that the country is isolated, but it is. I grew up in that solitude. I was the youngest in my entire family growing up. There were only a handful of kids in the neighborhood, and all of them were at least four years older than me. I remember being the odd man out; I was the last person picked. I remember being told that I was too young to understand or participate. I read to escape feeling lonely, and due to my love of reading, I started writing. It helped me escape, to express myself, and allowed me to handle life just a little bit better.
I did not grow up in a functional household. My father is an alcoholic, and my mother handled the stress of the situation poorly. I used to hold my mother while she cried out her worries. I used to tell her everything would be okay. She would ask me if she was a good mother, and my response would always be yes even on days when I wanted to say no. I did not want to add more weight to her shoulders. She already carried enough. My brothers wanted nothing to do with me. That is just what siblings are like growing up, but it is when they did have an interest in being around me that was bad news. I remember one of my brother's came up behind me while I was on the computer, grabbed my throat, and told me he was going to kill me before walking away laughing. All my life I have been told that, that is just what brothers do, but none take into consideration that I was beginning my descent into depression at that point, and that I was young enough to believe anything anyone told me. I had thoughts that no one cared about me and that I was better off dead. My brother confirmed those thoughts that day. If my own brother wanted to kill me, who could possibly love me? I write to escape that. I write to experience a life I wish I could have.
I also wrote to escape what I felt about myself. When I started high school, I was very depressed. I attempted suicide many times, and I saw ways to kill myself wherever I went. I cried constantly. I used to take bathroom breaks to cry and hurt myself. I hated everything about myself and saw nothing good in me. My grades slipped as I became increasingly exhausted and miserable. I saw no point in doing homework. Picking up a pen and writing for class used to take my breath away from exertion. My backpack always felt fifty pounds too heavy, and I could never warm up. I used to walk around in the middle of summer in black sweat pants, slippers, a long-sleeved shirt, and a hoodie, and I would still be cold. I had no motivation to do anything, so I wrote to escape that. I wrote myself as a strong heroine who could do anything she put her mind to. That sparked my desire to help others through my writing.
Growing up, my best friend was Terra. She was the family Rottweiler. That giant puppy would let me do anything to her: tug her ears, play with her stub of a tail, lay on her, and sit on her. Granted I was still very small at the time, so I didn't weigh a lot. After I was done torturing her, Terra would simply lick me as her tiny tail wagged wildly. I would talk to her about everything. She would always just lay there and listen. I lost one of my biggest supporters when she died. I had no way of letting out what I thought and felt, and it all started to bottle up. I felt happy and normal for a long time because I would push everything into this little bottle in my chest, but the bottle got too full, and it cracked. All the negative emotions I held back over the years crashed into me like a tsunami. I could not handle all that emotion at that intensity, and I started shutting down into a depression. I still struggle with it. I know I will always struggle with it. I started writing to help release those emotions and to help me cope with what I was feeling. I have lost count of how many journals and stories that featured depressed characters with happy endings I have written over the years.
Writing allowed me to be free when I felt like I was trapped in a cage. I always had to dress and act a certain way. I used to get scolded for dressing too casually for family events. My mom would get irate over my borrowing a sibling's shirts. Even now my mom will tug down my shirt when it rides up too much for her liking or will brush my hair so it will look a certain way or will give me disapproving looks over how I dress. There are many topics I can no longer talk about with my family because we disagree in extremes. I have yelled at them that I am ashamed to have such closed-minded and willfully ignorant family members for saying that homosexual people should not get married or adopt children because it "feels wrong". As a bisexual woman, this greatly upsets me. I am the black sheep of my family, and there are days I wonder if I am actually related to them or if there was a mix-up in the hospital. There are only a handful of topics I feel are safe to talk about with family members because I have been screamed at, called awful things, and slapped for voicing my opinions. I do not want repeats of those situations, so I refrain from talking about certain subjects. I write to allow myself the freedom I feel I am lacking in life.
Writing became a way for me to learn. I wrote about characters who had struggles, and I saw them overcome them or break under the pressure. I learned from them. They showed me new ways to look at a situation. They showed me how to succeed. They also taught me valuable lessons on being true to myself and how beneficial it can be. I learned to keep moving forward because time doesn't stop to allow you to catch up. I learned to stop clutching on to people who did not want me around, who did not care about me. I learned that, at some point, you might have to let a person sink or swim on their own. Stories have taught me that it is okay to put yourself first to make sure you remain healthy, but it showed me that allowing people in is also important. They helped me understand that you cannot change people. You can try to educate them, and you can try to expand their world, but ultimately it is up to them if they want to grow. My characters helped me to grow.
My characters helped me not feel so isolated and alone. On days when I felt like I had no one, I knew I could dive into a story and communicate to people through my characters and stories. I used them to connect with people from all over the world. I am still amazed by the messages and reactions I get from time to time. My own friends sometimes make me uncomfortable with the praise they heap upon me. I feel unworthy of it, and it makes me strive to be better. It makes the hole in my chest a little smaller every day, and I could never fully express how grateful I am for that.
A lot of people I meet that are not writers make the same mistakes city dwellers do when they think of the country. Non-writers do not take writing seriously and underestimate how hard it can be to accurately portray one's emotions on the page. My mother, who does not read or write often, always discouraged me from writing until one of my poems made her cry. She made the assumption that writing was easy and would not be profitable or sustainable for my future. Writing can be challenging, and it could be my ruin, but I believe it to be my salvation. It has done nothing except save me from the moment I brought it into my life. It has helped me express myself and has given me freedoms I feel I do not have elsewhere; it has taught me valuable lessons that I will hold unto for the remainder of my existence; it has connected me with amazing people I would never have met otherwise.
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Academic Papers
Não FicçãoThese works are the papers I've written for my community college and university courses. Topics will range from violence in video games and literary analysis to slavery and rape. There is also some poetry in here!
