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-Shadow Narrative -2 Translations and reflections -Objectives EssayTRANSCRIPT
Shadow Narrative……………………………………pages 3-10
Translation 1………………………………………....pages 11-12
Reflection 1…………………………………………..pages 13-14
Translation 2…………………………………………page 15
Reflection 2………………………………………….pages 16-17
Writing Arts Goal Reflection………………………..pages 18-21
I am not quite sure what to write about. My “assignment” is to
write about some sort of shadow that follows me around, or something
that I am ashamed of. I am not ashamed of anything I’ve done because it
ultimately made me who I am today. There is one particular shadow in
my life that I have since overcome, but I will write about how I came to
overcome it.
When I was in middle school, I noticed a change in myself. I
became really shy and quiet. I used to be very loud, talkative, and
outgoing in Elementary school so what happened? I started to isolate
myself from others. I tried to keep my distance from everyone at school,
and even at home (except for my mom). I didn’t have many friends, and
I was bullied a lot for being the “quiet, smart girl”. At first, I thought
that maybe being in a different school in a way scared me. I just couldn’t
seem to find my place in the world.
Then I started to notice strange behaviors. I started to wash my
hands so much that they were cracked and dry. I took almost three
showers a day. I considered my clothes dirty after only wearing them for
an hour. I started to get scared when other people sneezed, coughed, or
didn’t wash their hands. I started to panic in certain situations where I
felt that I wasn’t “clean”. These panic attacks were the worst. I would
just start crying hysterically. I felt such an immense wave of panic and
fear that I didn’t know what to do. It was so hard to calm down. My
heart would beat out of my chest, I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs,
my mind was overloading with so many panicky, scared, unreasonable
thoughts. The only way to describe it is that I felt like I was drowning.
My mom often tried to calm me down, but it was really hard on her.
I had irrational thoughts about a lot of things. I remember one time
getting so angry because my brother took off his swim trunks in the
pool. I wouldn’t get back in the pool until he put them back on, because
in my mind, he was “contaminating” the pool with his pecker (mind you
he was only about 6 years old and I was 11). Another situation in which
I acted irrationally was when I thought my bedroom wasn’t clean. We
moved when I was in fourth grade. My bedroom had once belonged to a
16 year old teen mom that shared the room with her on and off
boyfriend/father of her child. The room was painted a dirty
tannish/pinkish with a black trim border. The once tan turning yellow
carpets were stained and there were holes in the door from where (I
guess the girl) someone kicked or punched the door. I wouldn’t sleep in
my room about two years after already being in this new house because I
thought it was dirty. I was having a panic attack and my mom asked me
why it was too dirty for me to sleep in. I remember whispering that I was
afraid that there were “sex germs” on the wall. So I slept in my parents’
bed while my aunt and grand mom started to redo my room. They
painted the walls a light pink, put white wainscoting at the bottom half
of the walls, replaced the black trim with white trim, replaced the holey
door, and they put a new light tan carpet in. Now my room was my
“clean”.
Unfortunately, this was not the end of my struggles. I would get so
worked up about my hands being clean that I started to use cleaning
products on my hands (such as Lysol) and wash them under water that
was so hot that I would burn my hands. My three showers a day were at
least an hour and a half long. I refused to use the bathroom at school, so
I wouldn’t drink anything while I was at school. I had to carry hand
sanitizer with me everywhere, I used it before and after each class, and
whenever I touched anything that I considered to be “contaminated”.
My mom recognized this behavior as a type of anxiety disorder with
OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) because she has lived with her
anxiety disorder all of her life. She was upset that she passed her
“defective gene” to me but she did whatever was in her power to help
me feel better. I went to counseling for a little while. While the
counselor taught me techniques to calm my mind before/during a panic
attack, I didn’t like going. I sometimes felt that the counselor was
“dirty” and that by breathing the same air as her, I would then become
“dirty” too.
My anxiety about germs controlled my whole life. It was all I
could think about. I just couldn’t escape germs that were all around me. I
felt a sense of impending doom, like if I caught a certain germ than the
world would end. Everything that I considered “dirty” was
“contaminated”. I felt like the germs were out to get me. I didn’t like
being around anyone because just breathing the same air as someone that
I deemed “contaminated” would make me contaminated. Obviously this
behavior was unhealthy, but I was trapped in my own mind. I felt like I
was a slave to my worries inside my own head. It was this point in my
life that I really trusted in God to help me. The only time I ever felt
peace was when I prayed and read the Bible. I couldn’t understand why I
was so different from everyone else. Why was everyone so dirty? Why
did they not realize that they were dirty?
My antisocial behavior and naturally inclined intelligence made me
the perfect target for bullies. This made my anxiety is worse. Now I had
to not only worry about germs but I had to worry about other people
picking on me too. My mom, dad, and Aunt Linda took me to a
psychiatrist. I remember waiting an hour and a half in this nasty, dirty
waiting room because the doctor was running behind. Dr. G was his
name. I felt really uncomfortable because I deemed him as
contaminated. He was an overweight, hairy, older, Indian man with a
very thick accent. I was scared and my mom did a lot of the talking. He
prescribed me 25 mg of Zoloft, or my happy pills as I like to call them.
My mom explained to me that our anxiety disorders are genetic which
means that he brain doesn’t produce enough of a certain chemical called,
Serotonin which is secreted in times of panic to help calm yourself
down. Essentially, I had no natural way of calming myself down so I
irrationally worried which led to panic. The medicine, Zoloft, was a way
of putting this chemical back into my system. I eventually found the
right dosage that made me feel better. Feeling better is a relative term
that I use, but it really helps me function in everyday life. I still
irrationally worry and occasionally suffer from panic attacks, but not
nearly as bad as they were before the medicine. The medicine helps me
function in everyday so that I can actually talk to other people, have
friends, use public restrooms (sometimes), and my hands no longer look
like they went through a cheese grater. My worries still follow me
around, as a shadow, but I am able to better control them. I still carry
around hand sanitizer, I have to put my sleeve around my hand when
opening doors, I always wash my hands whenever I get home (because
my house is considered “clean” in my mind), and I always cringe when
someone in class sneezes or coughs (these are just a few of my many
obsessive habits), but I am able to live my life.
My anxiety disorder at first was the slave driver in my head that
controlled everything I did. When I went on the medicine my anxiety
became the monster under my bed. I knew it was there and I was afraid
of it, but I was too embarrassed and ashamed to tell anyone (besides my
immediate family) about it. I felt like a freak of nature, a crazy person, a
lunatic, a psycho who needed to be in a mental hospital. Eventually, as I
grew older, I learned that my anxiety is a part of who I am, and I should
not be ashamed of it. It grew into my shadow that follows me around.
Sometimes I can control the shadow from appearing because the sun is
shining and everything is happy. But sometimes, my shadow overtakes
my world and everything becomes cloudy and rainy. I am not afraid to
tell people about my anxiety disorder, but sometimes I am afraid to talk
about how extreme my behavior can be because of it. To this day, I
sometimes still feel like I’m crazy, but in these times I need to step back
and realize that God made me who I am for a reason. I feel that I am
more accepting of others because I know everyone has hard times, just
like me. I know a lot about different psychological disorders because
my own anxiety disorder has made me curious. Who knows maybe one
day I will become a counselor? Everyone is given different struggles in
life. This struggle has certainly caused quite uproar in my life, but
without it, I would not be who I am today. I feel that this shadow has
made me more compassionate.
I felt as if I was drowning.
I couldn’t get enough air,
I couldn’t breathe.
No one was there to save me.
No one to throw me a life raft.
No lighthouse to guide me.
I was a prisoner in my own mind.
So many thoughts would beat me down daily.
My strange behaviors held me hostage.
No matter how loud I screamed,
No how hard I pounded against the bars,
I was still trapped.
Still forced to face the cruel and unusual punishment.
There was no escape.
There was no light at the end of the tunnel.
There was no hope.
I was trapped inside my own head.
I was a victim of my own demise.
Panic, anxiety, worry.
All just words.
But those three words hold me captive.
The general guidelines I placed for myself for this poem was to
make it less about the facts of my anxiety disorder and how I dealt with
it, but rather how having anxiety made me feel. I specifically chose how
I felt whenever I had a panic attack. It’s hard to explain a panic attack to
someone who’s never experienced one before. After doing some
research and looking back, I thought the perfect metaphor would be to
describe a panic attack would be like drowning. After more thought, I
realized that anxiety in general dictates everything I do, such as how I
live my everyday life. I compared this to being imprisoned. The short
lines in this poem are an attempt to capture the panic and fear that I felt
during panic attacks or even suffering from anxiety in general. Everyone
has had a moment where they have experienced a deep and scary
moment filled with panic and fear. These moments can be from almost
drowning to being in a car accident. I tried to capture this feeling in my
poem because that’s how I felt living with anxiety, especially when I had
a panic attack. This sort of “human truth” was an attempt to deepen the
relationship between me and my audience. This visual/feeling helps the
reader relate to my own feelings. I started writing this poem by using a
sort of narrative arc with the ideas I research above in mind. I wrote
down whatever came to mind as I thought back about my experiences
with anxiety and panic attacks. I was eventually able to narrow and craft
these sentences into categories: drowning related and prison related.
Once I fixed up my sentences, I worked on the order which I would
present the sentences. After playing around with the order, I was able to
shorten the sentences to better portray the feeling of panic. Overall, this
exercise helped me realize what I really wanted to capture in my shadow
narrative: that having an anxiety disorder is crippling because of the fear
it casts.
Anxiety may cause:
Irrational thoughts
Paranoia
Fear
Panic
Incessant worrying
Strange antisocial behaviors
Exaggerated behaviors
Obsessive compulsive behaviors
This rhetorical change of my shadow narrative takes form of a
caution sign. Caution signs often warn people of what danger my lie
ahead. This particular caution sign, warns people some of what anxiety
can cause. This caution signs details some of the behaviors I experienced
when I developed my anxiety disorder. My guidelines for this piece of
writing were simple: take my experiences from anxiety and transform
them into symptoms on a caution sign. Mostly everyone has seen a
caution sign before, so this form of writing is familiar; I just took a
different perspective of the normal caution sign. Caution signs warn
passers of danger that was up ahead. When my anxiety was out of
control, it would have helped the people around me to see a caution sign
first. My emotions and thoughts were out of control which made me
exhibit some strange behaviors. I decided to turn my shadow narrative
into a caution sign because of how others felt around me. I was in some
ways a ticking time bomb. Any little thing could send me into a panic
attack. I wrote in my shadow narrative about having a panic attack
because my brother took off his bathing suit and jumped in the pool
(when he was only five years old). Rather than going through every little
experience that I’ve had with anxiety, I highlighted some of the main
memories in my mind. I wrote these memories down and then sorted
them into categories. Once in categories, I was better equipped to turn
the memories into a sort of symptom to be written on the caution sign.
For example, when my anxiety disorder developed, I was deathly afraid
of germs. This caused me to overly wash my hands, which turned into a
form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. For this, I simply wrote
“obsessive compulsive behaviors” instead of all the obsessive behaviors
I partook in. If I went through and listed every little thing that I did that
could fall under these symptoms, well, I’d still be writing.
The Rowan University writing department requires all writing arts
courses to have certain objectives that the students should have
accomplished or learned by the end of the semester. For the class,
Writer’s Mind, there are three specific objectives that I will outline, two
of the University’s and one of my own, and how I accomplished these
objectives. I will also discuss how my thought process as a writer has
changed over the course of this class.
The first objective I will discuss is “experiencing revision as an
ongoing process rather than an endpoint”. One thing that I am notorious
for doing in my writing is treating revision as a spelling and grammar
check. This class taught me how to more thoroughly revise my writings.
The way I normally start a piece of writing is by using a narrative arc. I
just write down everything and anything that pops into my head. Then, I
go back and try to determine what exactly my purpose for writing is.
Once I determine my purpose, I think about my audience. I, as the
writer, need to keep the audience in mind as I write. It’s important to
keep the audience in mind because they are the one who will judge my
writing. Another objective that comes to mind about dealing with the
audience is “anticipating how audiences construct meaning from texts”
We Do Abortions Here: A Nurse’s Story by Sallie Tisdale is a piece of
writing that keeps the audience in mind. Tisdale is writing from the point
of view from a nurse that administers abortions. Instead of writing like
she is some sort of monster, which most of the audience was probably
thinking the characterization would have been like, she actually makes
her audience feel sorry for her. She feels hopeless and in a way detached
from her job. It’s a crucial part of the writer’s job to figure out what
message they want the audience to gain from their writing and then to
cater to those needs.
My own goal for this class was to learn how to write in a different
way. I tend to only write either essays or creative sort stories. This class
forced me to sit down and write a narrative of my own experiences. My
problem was that I didn’t realize that I wasn’t thinking about myself as a
character in my own story. I just assumed that people reading would
know who I am. That is the biggest mistake a writer can make. Phillip
Lopate’s On The Necessity of Turning Oneself into a Character really
helped me realize my grave mistake in assuming my audience knew who
I was. I had to take a step back and figure out that my readers won’t
know me the way I know myself. Lopate suggests, “you need to have- or
acquire- distance from yourself” (Lopate page 178). Once I was able to
think of myself more as a character and less as the writer. In my mind, I
created a different person for who the Nicole in my narrative was
compared to who I am now- the Nicole is my story is the Nicole I used
to be. Once I came upon this great revelation with the guidance of
Lopate, my narrative became more effective.
My writing skills have definitely improved over the course of this
class. Besides the objectives I discussed above, I realized that it is okay
to take the same piece of writing and turn it into something else. Brent
Staple’s Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter
Public Space really helped drive this lesson home. In Staple’s essay, he
writes the same story with a different spin on it. It’s amazing to see how
a story can take a different path when the writer changes one aspect of it.
This is clearly seen in my translations of my shadow narrative. In class,
we translated some Shakespeare pieces into different “languages” such
as valley girl. While this activity was fun and humorous, it taught me
how to be more creative in the way I write by translating my writings
into a different format or language.
Ultimately this class has really made me think about what it means
to write and what it means to be a writer. This class forced me out of my
comfort zone which helped me learn some valuable lessons about my
writing styles. Needless to say, my writing horizons have been expanded
and my writing has greatly improved.