She Knew

I’ve only lost two loved ones in my life so far, three if you count my family’s dog, Ranger. Baba, my grandpa, was the first, and definitely a hard one. Even though he had lived a long life, battling diseases and ailments like a champ, it didn’t feel like his time. I didn’t think it was his time. But over the course of that year, I slowly passed through those stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Even though I still miss him, especially when I’ll call my grandmother and his voice picks up on the answering machine, I can say with confidence that I understand he is physically gone from my life (though definitely not from my heart, I will always love and hold onto him). However, when my uncle passed away during the summer of 2014, it was like everything inside me froze solid. I remember crying initially, and during the days to come afterwards, but after a while, I really felt numb. I didn’t cry, I wouldn’t get sad when I thought about him. I would dream about him and wake up perfectly fine. That may have been because of my excessive marijuana use to cope, but either way, I knew I wasn’t healing with those stages. I was in a permanent state of denial, he didn’t feel dead to me, it didn’t feel like he was gone. I still had moments where when we would go out to my beach house – which was about 45 minutes from where he lived – I’d think we would be making an appearance to see him at some point. It’s hard to explain my thought process, but to try, it felt like his death was just something we all had imagined and that he was really still alive. I needed closure.

His death wasn’t sudden in the fact that he had been diagnosed with Stage IV stomach cancer – we knew this would someday result in his demise, even though my optimism kept fooling me into thinking he could triumph over it (as my optimism always overpowers my thought). His death was sudden because it happened so quickly and all at once. One moment we were crying over the fact of his terminal illness, and weeks later he was moved to hospice where he would die that same afternoon. It just didn’t feel like reality; maybe I had fallen asleep in my real life and woken up in a parallel universe where his death was inevitable. And because we never had a funeral for him after the fact – he wasn’t religious and it was not what he wanted – we never received closure that he was no longer with us.

Before he died, Uncle Harry told his daughter, my cousin, that he wanted to have a memorial service 6 months or so after his death, and this past summer in August, my cousin planned it. “This won’t be a funeral with tears and sadness,” I remember her explaining to us, “Harry wouldn’t have wanted that. This will be a celebration of his life – a big party to talk about the great man he was.” I didn’t know when it would happen, but I knew at some point during this celebration, I would cry. I would break down and realize his death fully, and I would lose it. Months of repressed feeling and dry eyes would culminate in this moment, and the four stages would all clump together at once.

As we sat around the patio, people one by one got up and spoke about funny memories they had of my uncle, the crazy antics this man – with round, silver glasses that pinched his nose – had done. And the best part was, I could imagine him doing all of it. Harry was always so goofy and could place a smile on anyone’s face with a simple joke or display. At Thanksgiving, he was the one to grab the big, metallic, turkey fork and pretend to pick his nose with it. He was also the one to encourage me to make fart sounds with my armpits, and when I finally mastered it when I was seven, he was the first to praise me. I looked around the backyard, hoping to see his salt and peppered hair amongst the crowd, hoping to smell the Marlboro cigarette he’d always have hanging out the side of his mouth. We weren’t telling these stories to remember him by, we were telling them because these hilarious anecdotes would soon make him jump up on stage to perform more of his comedic acts, right? Again, my fantasy of optimism had taken over and I had to return to reality. It was when his college buddy, Cleveland, came to the stage and started speaking about the things he and him used to get into that I realized he and Cleveland could never create more memories like those. They could no longer goof off with one another or talk about their college days, beers in hand. My body started trembling. It was when Cleveland said how much he missed him, how much he wished they could do one more crazy stunt, that I couldn’t contain it anymore. I stared at my hands with my blurred vision, trying to quiet my sobs while my brother’s fiancée briefly rubbed my back. After a few moments, another gentle hand was placed on my back, then arms wrapped around me in a tight hug and a face was placed adjacent to mine. I turned around and saw my mother behind me, a frown pressed firmly at her lips and her sunglasses covering her watery eyes. I remember feeling surprised but also extremely grateful that she had come all the way from across the patio to comfort me, that protective, maternal instinct when a mother realizes their child is in need. I hadn’t expected anyone to come to my aid as the people were talking about him, to come and make sure I was okay, I had tried to go unnoticed. But I was so happy she had noticed, that she knew, and that she was there for me without any hesitation – as I know she always will be – because I not only needed her in that moment, I needed that to begin my ascent into healing.

Thought Paper

Last semester, I didn’t recognize myself.

My family – especially my mother – didn’t recognize me. Only a few friends noticed the difference in my behavior, the unusual person emerging within and taking control over me. To everyone else, I must have seemed okay. I must have given off the impression that I was the same as I had always been: the optimistic, enthusiastic, generally happy person.

But I wasn’t.

What my family and close friends saw and what I felt underneath was a girl who was defeated, dreading schoolwork and even the activities she once held dear. I didn’t want to pick my guitar and sing anymore, I just wanted to stay bundled up in my bed. I was depressed, stressed over the future and upcoming deadlines, and my thoughts were so irrational because of intense anxiety that I’d have to call or text my mother daily just to make sure it was all in my head.

My friend, Nicole, was always there to listen, just as I was for her. She was going through her own problems with depression and anxiety, which was not a new territory for her. One day, she confided in me and showed me a word document on her computer, hundreds of pages filled with diary entries chronicling her good days and her bad days, her relationships with boys – including the ones that failed – and anything else that came to her mind. She let me read a few, and I was amazed at how raw, powerful, and emotional these were. This wasn’t writing meant to be revised or writing meant to be seen by others. It was pure expression, for her and only her, I was just one of the lucky few to peer into her private thoughts and feelings. And it helped remind me why I love writing. Shortly after, I signed up for the Writing and Healing senior seminar.

 It is from this wonderful class – the profound discussions and interesting readings to which we blog on – that I’ve been able to place a word to what Nicole did and what I strive to do when I write. Emotional literacy. Letting go of the presence of a possible audience and digging into the depths of your mind, unlocking the feelings that are hidden beneath and exploring them through writing. Not trying to create something to be revised, something that needs to be perfect. Just expressing yourself and how you’re feeling as freely and purely as you can.

This class has healed wounds I didn’t even know existed. When we wrote our first personal essay, I chose to write mine about my own voice, how I had been negatively sanctioned in elementary school to quiet it and how that has affected my lack of speaking in class now. But upon writing it and searching my mind for that one moment, I came to a realization of where it stemmed from and made my own understanding of why. I explored the feelings I had felt then, the feelings that were being brought up while writing, and it helped me to be more aware of those voices, specifically in quieting them. After that, I’ve been more encouraged to speak up in class discussions (and not just for this class), like my opinion is wanted and valid.

It makes me wonder why this type of writing isn’t emphasized earlier in schools, especially since it’s been significant in helping people to heal. Is it because we see emotion as immature and inappropriate? As a form of weakness? As something completely disconnected from what writing should be? I would argue that it’s a combination of all of these factors, placed together under the umbrella of a stigma against emotion in general. Just like Bump says in his essay, we need more teachers to educate students about emotional literacy, and even I would argue that it should begin earlier. Getting into the process of freewriting and expressing how you feel to certain things, events, or experiences. After all, emotion is something found in all of us, and it shouldn’t feel like it needs to be hidden. Maybe it just needs to be expressed.

Treatable Humans

What another powerful and remarkable chapter. I thought it was really interesting how there was a course dedicated to reading and writing about suicide, getting a more in-depth analysis of it in a social context and of one’s own thoughts about it. I know I haven’t thought too much about the subject of it, and I definitely agree that it’s misunderstood. I’m sure there was one point where I, too, had the impression that the people who commit suicide are all doomed from the start. But I loved that admission that Jon makes. No one is doomed. You strip away the humanity factor if you view them as separate identities from people who do not have suicidal thoughts. Everyone is treatable.

This chapter brought up a lot of experiences about suicide in my past and made me realize just how prominent it’s been in my thoughts. I have never once tried to commit suicide because the thought of death terrifies me, but I won’t lie and say it hasn’t skimmed the surface of my mind. In my darkest moments, I may have imagined what would happen if I did, but I couldn’t even fathom it happening, so I would quickly toss away the thought.

However, I used to have fears that my brother, Nick, was suicidal. My brother didn’t have the best childhood and was bullied through all of elementary, middle, and some of high school. I remember one day, my mom was talking to me about treating my brother nicer because she had gone through his drawer and found some really dark poetry he had written, and she was afraid he may be experiencing suicidal thoughts. I understood suicide, or at least thought I did, I knew it was the notion of someone killing him or herself, but I didn’t know anyone who this had happened to. After that, if he ever was angry or upset after a hard day, slamming our bathroom door and locking it, I was afraid he would never come out. That we would have to kick down the door and see him dead on the floor, a stained razor on the edge of the sink. I used to get the urges to hide our razor blades, I didn’t even want to think about the possibility of losing my brother even if we didn’t get along all the time.

The summer after my freshman year when I was staying in Ithaca, I received a phone call from my mom and her voice was shaky and uneasy.

“I’m sick to my stomach,” I remember her saying.

I felt a weight in my stomach. A kid I had gone to middle and high school with, who I would wait at the bus stop with, had jumped in front of a train before finishing his senior year. I never got to know him personally, but I’ll never forget that feeling of “what could have been done?” That feeling that he, as every person who deals with suicidal thoughts or tendencies, is in fact, not a hopeless case, but is treatable. I still feel for his family.

After that experience, after sort of knowing someone who has committed suicide, I’ve definitely become a little more aware to how frequent it does happen. I’m always so fearful that the next time I hear about a suicidal incidence, it’s going to be someone I know and love. I’m always so fearful that a pang of guilt will overcome me, this “what could I have done better? What should I have done better?” thought. When my dad got laid off, he fell into a deep depression, and he wouldn’t really open up to my family about how he was feeling. They say most successful suicides are males because they’ve internalized that you must repress your emotions, and my dad is the poster boy for hiding his feelings. Every news article of a train fatality in my town, I prayed wouldn’t be my father. I always felt like this fear was irrational, but then again, is that my irrational notions and disconnect from suicide? We all experience hardships, and suicide is the extreme end of that spectrum. And I feel it happens a lot more than we think.

I think this class that Jeff taught was important for the sake of students relating more with their readings through writing the diaries. So as to make that “invisible barrier,” that disconnect between people who commit suicide and people who don’t completely fade away. Seeing all people as humans that go through hard times but that are very much treatable. It not only helped them relate and feel attached, like they actually knew the authors, but it made them more in tune with their ideas about what suicide was and how it comes about in their lives. I know through writing this small piece, I’ve started to come to some sort of understanding about how I feel and think and write about suicide, but I still think there needs to be more education about it. Does IC have a course like this, or do they think it would be too problematic?

We Need Emotional Literacy

Reading this chapter made me realize how emotionally illiterate I can be on the page sometimes, which to me is ironic considering how emotionally expressive I am in person. But then, it makes me wonder that something may be up with education where I simply can’t translate it on paper as well as I can in person, and I think it’s in part that many of the classes we take, writing especially, have you responding to the readings with what you think (e.g. “what was the symbolism you noticed?”) rather than how it made you feel inside. Teachers don’t often teach this expressive route, while others do. Before I got to college and experienced free-writing along with reflective writing, I had no clue how to write about how I felt, I just understood how to summarize and draw analyses from texts as if there was some disconnect in my own brain. Sometimes, I still don’t feel like I understand how to write that way, but progressively I feel I’m getting a little bit better at it through writing posts like this and doing other reflective writings in my other class. Like for my Public Essay class, we respond to each of the readings in our journal, and while I’ll sometimes say how portions made me feel, drawing on the anger or what made me confused or upset, I don’t think I’m getting as deep into the writing as I could.

So I think Bump is right, we need to incorporate emotional literacy in what is already being taught, because in a way it is therapeutic and helpful. It gets us more in tune with our emotions. Education really does go hand in hand with mental health. I mean, we all have minds, correct? We all go through stress, anxiety, and depression from time to time. Then we all have mental health that can deteriorate. As he quotes Redl and Wattenberg, “the teacher can and must assume some share of responsibility for the emotional as well as the intellectual development of his students.” (316). This reminded me of Wendell Berry’s essay “Two Minds” about the sympathetic and the rational mind. It seems like in education, we tend to place superiority in intellect and knowledge (the rational mind) over feelings and emotions (the sympathetic mind). We see our professors as highly-educated, powerful beings – Bump makes the joke of an automaton – instead of a human being with emotions like the rest of us. And that’s also why there may be this disconnect. Our professor doesn’t express how his day has been, so why should I? Would it really be uncomfortable or detrimental to the learning experience if we saw our professor as a peer rather than as a superior?

The part that really broke my heart was when he shared the story of a girl who had written an anonymous note about trying to kill herself, and once tracing the handwriting to the student, he talked with her through it, walked her to the counseling center, and kept in contact with her progress. Talk about showing emotion and showing how much someone can care. I truly believe that professors sometimes forget that their student’s aren’t just dealing with the work given in that class (or other classes for that matter), but go through their own turmoil with relationships, family, friends, stress at work, or even personal struggles with drugs or alcohol. And on the flipside, we also forget that our professors are people outside of the school context as well. They may be parents, have another job, have other commitments, but we just assign them to the context we see them in most, just like they may with us. And this is problematic. To bring it back to the rational mind, we see them in this intellectual context, instead of as people with passions, dislikes, worries, fears and all the things that make us human.

This piece also reiterated to me the notion that mental health still is very stigmatized. I was livid when the administrators cancelled his course because they thought he was blurring the roles of professor with therapist. There was too much focus on emotion, and he was trying to tell his students how to think and act (which he wasn’t). As if it isn’t his job to make sure his students are physically and emotionally okay while taking the course. The administrators clearly, as Bump points out, feared emotion and all that it could bring. And they clearly did not realize the extent with which taking a course like that can benefit you, how therapy isn’t a bad thing but is helpful. I even wrote in my notes, “did these administrators have sticks up their asses?” because honestly, why else pull the course, even when he backed up his argument for teaching it and they had no response. It just reinforces the fight that still needs to be made in education that we need emotional literacy. We need people, like them, to realize it’s not a harmful thing, but it’s a human thing. We all have emotions, and expressing them through writing is a very therapeutic thing, getting us more in touch with ourselves and how we feel.

If you couldn’t tell, I really enjoyed this chapter. I really loved the beginning with his own personal experience and I loved the discussion through the middle. However, I feel like he went on a bit too long about the process of what his courses taught and the process of his course being pulled and what he did to try and revive it. I understand he did this to get deeper into the discussion of emotional literacy being taught in an educational environment (using his own example), but I wanted more examples of it being taught elsewhere, a more global discussion I suppose. Either way though, it was a really interesting chapter that made me feel many emotions to which I tried to expand and write about here. Like I said earlier though, it’s still something I’m trying to get better at.

Each Shirt is A Story

Like some of the previous chapters have discussed writing and healing – especially the introduction and chapters 3, 5, and 9 – chapter 14 focuses on creative outlets that involve writing as a tool for healing. The theme of writing to discover the self as transformative was once again present within the discussion in the piece, and I really like that all of these motifs are being explored and evaluated on in the subsequent chapters. I thought this was one of the most powerful readings we’ve had yet, because just as the author does not want to speak for the voices of those who have abused physically, mentally, or sexually, she gives us the excerpts from the shirts, and I thought this was very effective. She does elaborate a bit on the common themes and tricks they used – telling what happened, sharing the wounded experience through a journey (which focuses on the outcome of hope), speaking back to the abusers, and claiming a sense of wholeness – but other than that, these voices and their presences really stand out.

The essence of the essay, despite sharing some of the stories from the Clothesline Project, wants to reiterate how much writing and the language we use can work extremely effectively for those who have been hurt and are in need of healing. Through this process of speaking out and sharing your story (in this creative, tangible, and representable way) you not only break your silence, but you join in an individual healing as well as a type of social healing or transformation. The project “is the gathering of individual names or voices into a single visual metaphor” (359) and shows these women that they are not alone in their struggle. It leads to a collective healing, and I thought that was powerful and also very significant. And the fact that the project can not maintain in the same place, the way it is placed up and taken down and reconstructed really goes back to the idea how text can be “re-created and revised.” (360).

I think what we should discuss further in class are other types of creative outlets we notice like the Clothesline Project. I know she briefly notes a few: Take Back the Night rallies, maybe even Slutwalks could be an example. And we could even further discuss any we have or have noticed in the Ithaca region.