Writing Has Been There for Me, Most of the Time

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            Remember when you were in middle school and that superrr cute person was sitting a couple rows behind you in history class? You wanted them to know that you liked them in hopes they liked you back, but there was absolutely no way you could just walk up to them and say you like them! You got nervous just thinking about telling them you liked them, and couldn’t bare to hear them say, “I don’t like you” as a response. You then get the genius idea to pass them a note, to express how you feel about them. This reason exactly is why I began writing, it’s where I can express my feelings without having to say them aloud. Although I love writing for this reason, I don’t think I ever have the urge to talk about a report over the Boston Tea Party aloud. This is where my excitement for writing plummets. I do not enjoy writing about any set topic, I just want to write to write. My relationship with writing is amazing when it comes to therapeutic writing but is less than spectacular when it’s to be done for assignments.

            Writing was a dreadful task to me before I began high school. At the age of 14, my ideation of this perfect life I lived came crashing down around like a skylight breaking overhead. The shards of glass, resembling pieces of my life, hit me at different moments but each shard pierced my skin a little deeper. The first piece of glass that hit me was the thing my mom always sheltered me from. My father’s mental illness; bipolar disorder. One phrase that never had any effect on my life soon became my most hated phrase. Hearing people claim that they “are” bipolar because of occasional, typical-person mood swings makes me wince every time. My dad was my best friend and hero until he turned into a person that was unrecognizable to me. A man who would never raise his voice began to curse and scream at me with a fury in his eyes that still haunts me. The same man who once made me feel so safe was the same man my mom had to warn my high school about, saying to call the cops on him because he might come for me. When he had episodes when I was younger, he would attempt to kidnap my brothers and I because my mom wouldn’t allow him to see us. If he couldn’t kidnap us, he would sell all of his things and flee the state. After we found him and he would get institutionalized, my mom and family went through to clean up the mess he made, and my mom never wanted me to see the mess. Dealing with a mentally ill parent would have anyone looking for an escape. My mother forced me to go to counseling after isolating myself and locking myself in my room for weeks. It didn’t help. My mom was extremely concerned and hired a really expensive therapist. The therapist worked on so many forms of therapy with me and diagnosed me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Depression. After countless failed attempts at different forms of therapy, my therapist suggested something unexpected; writing. It was so simple that when she suggested it I actually laughed at it. Despite me having no faith in therapeutic writing, I decided it was worth a shot. No requirements, no limits, all I had to do was write and it didn’t matter what I wrote. After I stared at the blank lined paper hopelessly for 10 minutes, I finally put my black, ball-point pen to the paper. The instant the pen tip hit the paper, the words began to pour out. I wrote about anything and everything. I finally could express how I felt without my heart racing and tears filling my eyes.

            Things started to look up. The constant 400 pound sadness that weighed down my chest soon felt like 350 pounds, then 300. Slowly my perception of life began to shift. I stopped believing the world was against me and that I was meant to be here, alive. That numb, emptiness I once felt slowly turned into feelings of excitement and nervousness. Any feeling was a good feeling when at one point you felt nothing. Writing allowed me to continue my life, and it still helps me two years later. When I feel down or just overwhelmed from family, work, or anything I just let my hand grip the pen and move swiftly across the papers and my mind just pours out in ink. Writing is my escape and my way of expressing whatever emotions are sitting inside me.

            Writing is typically my way of destressing, except when it has criteria and a due date. While I was preparing to attend the University of Michigan, I saw that I had to take the DSP Writing Placement Exam, and I can’t say I was overjoyed. It was an argumentative essay about if the increased number of smartphone and social media users have ruined a generation. The expectations of this writing were to agree or disagree with the author, cite directly from the article, and find other sources but keep the most focus on the original article. With all writing assignments I always have some sort of difficulty. I struggled with finding credible sources to cite and transitioning from one supporting detail to the next. This was a fairly interesting topic, but it still didn’t give me the escape that free-writing does. I had difficulty staying on topic and trying to refrain from writing about myself. I finished the essay almost satisfied with how it turned out but still believing that my “writing time” could’ve had a better use. My relationship with writing varies depending on my reason for writing.

            The University of Michigan is supposed to be difficult and not always the most fun, and I was smacked in the face with this reality when I arrived, and they said we were taking another writing placement exam. This exam, the Summer Bridge Writing Placement Exam, was about the recent increase in public high school dropouts along with three possible sides of why this is happening were given. The possible sides were that high schoolers just don’t have interest in school anymore, schools aren’t doing enough to make an enriching overall experience, and that there actually isn’t an increase in public high school dropouts. The expectations for this placement exam included a fifty-minute time limit, only using the given article and prior knowledge to support side, and to choose one of the given sides to support. When I write I typically have an unlimited amount of time, so the time limit definitely caused some problems. About half way through writing the paper, I thought of a way to improve my introduction but then I saw my time left on the board. I knew I had no chance of fixing my introduction and completing my paper on time, so I had to settle with a lesser quality paper.

            Writing has been really good for me just to get my emotions out, but I do lack the desire to write when I’m required to for classes. Writing has been there for me when I couldn’t get other help I needed. With an optimistic attitude, I’m trying to believe that since there is a lot of good that comes from therapeutic writing, that there must be some positives that come from writing assignments. I don’t enjoy set instructions on what to write and how to write, but I do want to improve my writing skills in the classroom and try to find something positive that comes from it, and I’m hoping this course will help with that.