Power In The Period

I’d never really thought that much about the actual process of “becoming a woman.” I was more excited to leave behind elementary school and enter middle school, to be considered someone who was growing older, more intelligent, and more mature. That was a big thing for me: maturity and being seen as mature in the eyes of my mother.

I knew about periods. Knew that one day it would happen to me and then magically my breasts would start to grow. I’d seen it happen to my older sister, whose breasts weren’t very big – neither were my mothers – but instead pretty average, so it didn’t really bother me. I didn’t know when it would happen, and I didn’t really wait on bated breath.

Cut to the beginning of sixth grade when I befriended this insanely beautiful, “popular” girl and her posse. Why she chose to be my friend, I have no clue. I was a geeky, awkward, skinny girl clueless about what to wear and how to interact with boys, and it never bothered me until I started realizing these features in myself by hanging out with them. I started getting the feeling she befriended me because she saw me as this charity project for her to take on and transform into something she deemed beautiful, that maybe she felt a sense of power in trying to control me as if I were her Barbie doll. With the countless sleepovers where she and our group would make me over with eyeliner and mascara, telling me “Charlotte, you look sooooooo beautiful with makeup on!” and always telling me what clothes I needed to wear – Lacoste and Abercrombie, I mean really? – I started to get the hint that I was a follower, not a leader. I didn’t have any power or say.

But I had found my way in. T’ana, our “fearless” leader, hadn’t gotten her period yet. She was becoming concerned because she really wanted to develop her breasts – I mean, the girl had an image to uphold for the sake of her popularity. She would confide in me a lot about this, and after a while, it soon became a game between us of who would get their period first (and in our case, whose boobs would begin to grow first). Suddenly, the hope for my period to arrive became intense, a suspenseful competition, and I would come home everyday hoping to see a red stain on my underwear. We both agreed that whoever got their period first would call the other as a way to say “congratulations” when really it was a way to express bragging rights, and I bet she thought it would be her. Another way for her to express her power over me, just because she reached her femininity first. Well, on December 5, 2005 – yes, I still remember the date – when I was eleven years old, I came home from school and upon going into the bathroom and sitting on the toilet, I looked down into my underwear and shrieked with joy. I feel very odd admitting that now, especially how right afterwards I paraded around my house screaming to my family that I had reached this momentous occasion, but I finally felt like I had won at something against those girls, especially T'ana. I finally had some sort of power over her that she couldn't take away.

And you bet your ass the next thing I did was grab the telephone to dial her number.

Personal Writing is Important!

This chapter reminded me the very reasons why I love personal writing (especially the classes I’ve taken here, which include Personal Essay, Intro to Creative Writing, Creative Nonfiction and this one). I had been so accustomed to academic writing that when I first took Intro to Creative my sophomore year, and we would freewrite everyday, I was surprised at the things I would pull out from inside of me. These simple prompts would pull up moments I thought I had long forgotten, even some painful ones, all in this way to “move [stories] from a narrative that skims the top of [an] experience to one that unearths it.” (161). While not all of my essays came from sad experiences in my life, I felt really drawn to writing about them when the time did come, because of one of the key points MacCurdy brings up which is that “we sense painful memories even if we cannot verbalize them,” (162) and in writing about these moments, we try to make sense of them. What was even more strange than the magnetic pull towards writing about them was how much relief would come after the fact of writing about them. They didn't make me any more depressed, especially in the moment of remembering the sad moments. Getting it out of me and on the page and writing about how it all had made me feel was indeed therapeutic.

I love the way MacCurdy sectioned her piece. When she was talking about how our brain operates with the limbic system and the amygdala and hippocampus, it really did remind me of Alice Brand’s piece about emotion in the brain. I thought the most compelling part was how she says to think of these moments in images, little snapshots in our mind. Or imagine holding a film camera trying to capture that moment, what was said, heard, touched, smelled? And how did you feel? “Speech which does not integrate concrete images and the emotions those images convey into the concepts that they can produce will not provide a healing function for the individual.” (167). Because that’s where most of the therapeutic nature comes from writing about these difficult, traumatic experiences, placing yourself back in that moment (into those images) and describing how it felt to be back there.

One of my questions for the class comes from MacCurdy’s statement about how traumatic memories leave a mental image in the limbic system – and in the amygdala – to which they are given emotional weight. What about some of those traumatic memories that people have repressed and simply cannot recall? What happens to those and where are they stored? Because I’ve heard of women who have blacked out and cannot remember the trauma of childbirth and how painful it was, does our mind shut off if something is ever too painful physically or mentally?

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?