Story of Selves

I relive all of these moments; I hear them, see them, feel them. I write them. I let them spill across pages and pages like blood congealing into words too perfect to be me. I tumble back and forth between people and worlds that I live. My words have changed with the person I am, or possibly, just changed me, like rain soaking the hardest of dried clay until it is soft enough to be shaped. I work to craft these words, to paint a picture of myself, who I was and who I am, in order to get you to understand.

Through my writing for this class, I have worked to try to find a voice that will get people to recognize the lives and struggles of inner city youth. I struggle with portraying myself as a whole person because of the complexity of how I have become who I am today. I want to make my writing accessible to both an academic audience and the community that I'm writing about but, lost within all of that, I also don't know how to explain who I am in relation to my community.

For my second personal essay I wrote about my struggle with speech and language growing up but in looking back at it I realize how difficult it still is to put my home, my childhood and my experiences into words never mind be able to convey how I feel about them. I took you, the academic, through my experience at the Undoing Racism conference in Springfield, and showed you my reactions to the somewhat academic material and environment. I highlighted language, both within the workshop itself and in my reactions through memories that make me extremely aware of my difficulty speaking like rapping on the bus to and from lacrosse games, asking Dorothy what all the words she was using meant, people misunderstanding what I said in Tinson's class and how this language and environment was stifling to me:

The words
choke up
in my throat
wanting
needing
to be expressed
needing
to disagree
not to
oppose you
but because
that
is
who I am
opposition
disagreement
conflicting
feelings
thoughts
ideas
perspectives
breaking down
everything.
I know.
You
do not
know everything
Everything
is not
about you
It is me.
This is me.
These
thoughts
words
scars
eyes
that tell stories
if
you would take
the time
to listen.
They are
mine.
I feel
your energy

your 'presence'
expanding
'filling space'
pushing down
on my chest
as it
expands
with every breath
filled
with your
vocabulary
and your
words
conveying my emotion
the same
words
that you use
against me
...
distributing
your power.

It is

silencing. (Personal Essay, p5-6)

I included my poem because that was always my way of speaking. Written word, no rules or limitations as to how it needs to be structured, how it needs to be said, just me flowing to the beat of the thoughts in my head. I never thought in words when I was younger, I thought in pictures and feelings, whether they were real or imagined, sometimes I didn't know the difference. With poetry I didn't have to know the difference; I could show you the wolves chasing me through streets that I picture so vividly, streets that I walked down every day on my way back and forth from school though I didn't know them at the time. I was six. I don't remember leaving. I don't know if I actually saw my father punch holes in the wall around my mom's head but I see it anyways. I remember the shadow of his truck and my mom taking us around the corner to hide. I don't remember my mom being there, I just remember the wolves.

When I explain it like this, without the metaphors or the ambiguity, the academic will see it very differently from the way I would look at it. I am not writing for people to figure out why I dissociate or get reality mixed up with things that never happened. I don't want to be analyzed, I just want to be heard.

I think that was what I was trying to illustrate in Essay 3 when I talked about my professor's reaction to a poem I wrote. She said simply, “very powerful” and I tried to explain the impact of the reader's response on someone who is willing to share such intimate details of their life:

Death is the same now as it was then
my sister’s best friend
saw her mom’s boy friend...
Yesenia was six years old
searching apartments to see if anyone was home
He tried to kill himself after he slit her mom’s throat
They try to be strong for her. No one denies what we know.
But at the funeral there was a room for the kids
Everyone said we were too young to see the casket

And it continues as we grow
Friends stay the night cuz they cant go home
And we start figuring more and more out on our own
We are all that each other has to decipher their lies
They cant deal with what really goes on in our lives
I remember what my best friend once said
She woke up with her baby sitter’s boyfriend in her bed
Her eyes retreat back to the world when she was seven
Her words resonate in me, “I just can’t go through that again” (Essay 3, p3).

Saying that it is important to know when the writer needs help with the content of the actual essay and when they need someone to help them through the therapeutic aspect of what they are talking about. This poem was a reaction to another piece of writing, The Private Worlds of Dying Children by Myra Bluebond-Langner. In reading about her observations of how children with leukemia found out information I reminisced on my own experiences:

I hide under the dining room table pretending to play
Listening hard to hear what they have to say
The heavy air makes it hard for me to breathe
The carpet I slide across burns my knees
I take in what Im not supposed to know
The learning process is slow but if I just don’t show
that every word they say I absorb...
the adults play too with their double-edged swords
I emerge from beneath the table...no longer sheltered
My curiosity remains...my voice left unheard (Essay 3, p3).

I tried to connect to the story in a real and personal way. When asked, “But how did it make you feel? Write about that.” The only response I can think of is that I feel like that same little kid. I go back to that place and that mindset. I become that person again, a person who I feel like I have lost and am desperately trying to recover but can't for the same reasons that I wrote about in the poem. My life has transformed from being a kid sitting under the table listening to the adults talk, oblivious to us and the lives we live as kids, to sitting in class listening to people talk about this author and that theory and the way all these things work with and against each other, unable to understand the lives of the people they are talking about. In the poem I resist the adult world, emphasizing the need for youth to support each other, the overall ignorance of adults and my fear of inevitably becoming one and perpetuating the same system:

And we deal with it, helping each other through tough times
Adults oblivious to the signs
We know every little detail that goes on in their world
Will we be the same way when its our turn? (Essay 3, p3).

The same can be said for my relationship with academia. I feel as though my community should have its own support system, that academia is ignorant of the real issues going on in my community and I am terrified of perpetuating a dynamic that silences young voices.

At the end of my personal essay, I wrapped up with a situation where confronted with a person who was scared to speak up just as I had been for so long, I finally found my voice in order to help him not lose his. I feel as though the ending, while it may seem contrived, was really an accurate portrayal of who I am and the message I want to get across. In responding to the man who was afraid to speak up because he did not want to offend anyone I told him that,

“As scary as it is to put yourself out there, not talking about it only helps to perpetuate system that we're talking about...This is why were here. To understand each other and work through our thoughts. We need to be able to make mistakes, we need to be able to confront them progressively and we need to be able to learn from them. Its all a necessary part of confronting the system” (Personal Essay, p7).

To accurately portray who I am now, I needed to show that I was ready to speak up, if not for myself than for others, because that was what the paper was, speaking up for unheard voices; I needed to show the way I used vocabulary and was able to speak intelligently when I did speak; I needed to show how scared I was, and still am, to speak up in that group (“I laugh, taking a deep breath, trying to stop my voice from shaking” (Personal Essay, p7)); and I needed to show that even after saying it, I went back to being the observer that I have always been. The problem, however is I do not set it up in a way that allows the reader to understand all of that because the person that I was does not have a voice.

The person I was has never had a voice. As a youth in an urban neighborhood, with a very traditional Italian family, a thick Boston accent, a limited vocabulary and having learned english though broken Spanish and Italian, I always felt like no matter how smart I was or what I had to offer I would never get people to understand me. Now, I realize that that is what is missing from my essay.

Upon realizing this, however, I am faced with another dilemma. My story is not about finding my voice; it is about all of the voices that go unheard. While writing, I knew this on some level. The part that I used to attempt to portray the person I was then illustrates the struggle to be heard in a place like where I grew up:

Laughing voices and loudness fills the air. I see people moving up and down over the tops of the seats. I sit curled up at the back of the bus. I am one of the leaders of the team. I know this. On the field I take charge but here, in these social settings, I am passive. I sit back and watch them battle it out. There insults back and forth, a dap and congrats for the illest line dropped. It’s outrageous what we say to each other yet put down, we lift others up, uncaring that we are at the bottom because were having fun. In the end, we know that nothing will change because we know how not to take offense. The music starts and I jump in. Every word flows, listened to time after time, in pain and in happiness, the same rhymes…connecting. Words of meaning. Surrounded by people who know the same feelings and a similar way of life. Then I curl back up again assuming my place until the game starts and I zone into my own world, escaping everything else, concentrating on the ball and letting my body just move naturally, the way my mouth does when I'm rapping. But it was all abandoned for a world of hierarchy and concentration on useless information..(Personal Essay, p1-2).

In looking at this in conjunction with the poem I wrote, I feel like I could really portray the difference between my voice as a child and the voice I have now but in order to do so, I need to somehow get the voices to acknowledge each other.

Every time I go home I become more aware of how I am changing. The first weekend I went home this year was for my friend Adriana's funeral. I sat in the pews of the church among my friends and watched the slide show of photos of her play over and over and over.. remembering the little Chelsea girl with the big attitude that she has always been and seeing the beautiful, smart young woman she was growing to be. We had both gotten into private schools the same year through the lacrosse program we were a part of and come back to coach at the camps we had been going to since middle school together.

Among her family, friends and teammates who contributed something to the eulogy, her advisor from Concord Academy shared his memories of Adriana. He illustrated who she was when she first got to Concord, telling the story of how she had been the only one to take him up on the proposal that his freshman class, after watching the seniors give their final speeches at the end of the year, should write what they would want to say when it comes to be their turn. He read to us some of the less provocative parts and I laughed harder than I thought possible at a funeral. I could hear her say the words, picture her exaggerated body movements and feel her sarcasm. “This is what you're going to leave people with?” he asked her. She smiled. There is no doubt in my mind that she would have gotten up in front of that school and said every word she wrote on those papers. Thats who she was, a Chelsea girl with an attitude and a voice that was never afraid to speak whether or not it was taken seriously. “As I got to know Adriana better, I realized that I really didn't know much about Chelsea. One day I tried to ask her about it. I saw what Chelsea made her but I wanted to know what it meant to her.” He paused for a second. People at private institutions always seem to be so great at giving speeches. “She just smiled at me and giggled. She never explained it, all I know about Chelsea was what I saw in her.” In those few short paragraphs, he nearly brought her back to life. He explained how at the end of her senior year he had given her speech back to her only to be met with the reaction, “You actually kept that.”

The I can show you at this point in my life will never completely be who I was as a child. I can tell you stories for weeks, show you snapshots of my past, family, friends, enemies, teachers and coaches. I can show you Chelsea High School, pointing out the boy's locker room that I had to be escorted through in elementary school for weigh-ins before pop warner foot ball games; the same locker room that my little sister lost her virginity in her freshman year. I can take you up the stairs that I blacked out at the top of every day and into the hall where my best friend told me she had tried to kill herself after her mom pushed her down a flight of stairs. I can explain how different my house was when I taught my little sister how to play lacrosse out on the street or when two more grand parents, or my cousin, or a friend moved in.

But I can never bring that part of me back to life because I will always be interacting with that person as the person I am now. I will always see my community within a greater context. The streets that I grew up playing touch football on are the same streets subject to police profiling. The diverse schools that I went to, where during my freshman year I was informed by my history teacher that racism and the KKK still exist, were all part of a system that work to control black and brown bodies in the name of education. My memories of my cousin stealing my mom's medicine after living with us for a month, court hearings for the custody of his daughter, and child social services showing up at my house were all a part of this larger fucked up system that makes our lives more complicated and less valued. I have grown up as both a part of this system and a part of this community, neither of which really acknowledge each other.

I was recently talking to a professor who was helping me rewrite a paper for his class. “It'll help if you tighten all this up,” he said, explaining about the structure of the paper.
“What do you mean by tighten it up?”
“Well for one...” He turned to the next to last page and pointed at one of the paragraphs. “Stop talking to me like were on the bus to Springfield.”
I laughed, thinking about this essay which I had been working on right before going to the meeting. “But I hate analytical writing.”
“Hey, listen. You're gonna have to use it at times.”
“Sometimes its just too hard to try to get my ideas across using academic language and I have to try to figure out how to make it understandable.”
“This is you're training ground. Someday you're going to need to write a grant proposal for an organization asking for fifty dollars, which isn't a lot of money for organizations.”
“It can be.” I chime in with a smile.
“It doesn't mean you're a different person when you go back home. I go home and I'm not a professor anymore. I mean, they recognize it and everything I've accomplished but they wanna know that your always learning and bringing it back. Otherwise what was the point of sending you to college.”

Being at Hampshire and going to Deerfield Academy and the Mountain School have opened my eyes to more than I ever could have imagined learning about. Growing and changing has always made me feel as though I am leaving a part of myself behind and, in my writing, sometimes I do leave that part of me out. I rewrote my poem from my personal essay to try to explore the ways that I can work to incorporate both my voice now and my voice as a child:

The words
choke up
in my throat
wanting
needing
to be expressed
needing
to disagree
not to
oppose you
but because
that
is
who I am
opposition
disagreement
conflicting
feelings
thoughts
ideas
perspectives
breaking down
everything
I know.
You
do not
know everything.
Everything
is not
about you
It is me.
This is me.
These
thoughts
words
scars
eyes
that tell stories
if
you would take
the time
to listen.
They are
mine.

Don't wanna

hear it?

That's fine.

After all

I was born

in this city

where light

only shines

on the street,

right?

So

I'll spit

for you

from the back

of bus seats

classrooms

curbs

these words

flow

but are

seldom heard

over you.

You must

know best

You must

know me best

right?

Cuz you

continue to

tell me

who I am.

And what

these streets

mean.
I feel
your energy

your 'presence'
expanding
into my community
pushing down
on my chest
as it
expands
with every breath
filled
with your
vocabulary
and your
words
conveying

my emotion
thoughts

beliefs.

Its the

only way to

get you

to take me

seriously.

By adding my voice as a youth, talking about what my voice is and transferring it to why I have had to change it, the reader is able to better understand not only how I feel but how I relate to the academic world.

As a child, I searched and scraped for the words to not just write but speak. My writing was a jumbled mess of figuring out how to say things, how to describe but as I've gotten older my writing has taken on a new purpose. I do not just write to reflect on or work though things I have witnessed or difficult experiences that I've had in my life, though I do do those too. I write to make a point and make you think. Being able to tell my own story while getting the reader to think critically about a concept on a larger scale is a weird middle ground to walk on especially in a world where academia is more valued. Without fusing the world of academics with the practice of storytelling we will never create change. My voice means nothing if it cannot speak for others.

Silent Conversation

Its the language.
Threatening, problematic, race/age/anti-semit --ism, oppressed, silenced, aware.
Words are tossed around the circle drawing my eyes toward the voices. Matti, one of the facilitators of the Undoing Racism Conference, is in the middle of the room. He points at the board, the left side, written in black, is what we would think if we saw a person in a grocery line using food stamps, the right, written in red, is what you would overhear the couple behind you saying.
“This is the language we are given to explain the world around us.” He uses his hands and body to emphasize what he's saying, occasionally going over and touching the red side of the paper. “The language that we use influences how we treat each other and what we have to use is a language that only allows us to access the worst in our communities. So then by using that language, you are then working for the system.” He pauses for a second, looking at the faces around the room. “I want you to understand..”
I bask in the sound of his accent as he speaks, the strength of his voice. It takes me back home.

Laughing voices and loudness fills the air. I see people moving up and down over the tops of the seats. I sit curled up at the back of the bus. I am one of the leaders of the team. I know this. On the field I take charge but here, in these social settings, I am passive. I sit back and watch them battle it out. There insults back and forth, a dap and congrats for the illest line dropped. It’s outrageous what we say to each other yet put down, we lift others up, uncaring that we are at the bottom because were having fun. In the end, we know that nothing will change because we know how not to take offense. The music starts and I jump in. Every word flows, listened to time after time, in pain and in happiness, the same rhymes…connecting. Words of meaning. Surrounded by people who know the same feelings and a similar way of life. Then I curl back up again assuming my place until the game starts and I zone into my own world, escaping everything else, concentrating on the ball and letting my body just move naturally, the way my mouth does when I'm rapping. But it was all abandoned for a world of hierarchy and concentration on useless information..
“Look at the first amendment.” Annie, another facilitator, steps forward and back, her fingers intertwined, cupping her hands and opening back up as she speaks. “Article 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereas the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” She pauses. “Incarceration is slavery. It says it right there in the thirteenth amendment.” She hits the paper with the back of her hand as she speaks. “Who here has learned about the thirteenth amendment? Even those who have access to it need the tools to really be able to understand it correctly.” She steps back to the board. “It goes back to the language,” she says touching the side written in red.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“It always took you so long to say something. We'd be waiting for you to finish for like 5 minutes.” Stanton remembers our sophomore english class. It was my first year at Deerfield Academy, a private boarding school in New England.
I remember too. I remember searching desperately to find the words to express what I was thinking. “Um...what's it called?” I would say, trying to articulate myself. I over exaggerated my pronunciation, unaware that my accent was slowly fading away. I remember the nights I spent talking to Dorothy, asking her what words meant after each thought she expressed. “I'm really glad that you ask me what things mean instead of just pretending that you know what I'm talking about,” she said to me one time. “Its refreshing.” I asked Dorothy about everything, soaking in her words and her knowledge...her vocabulary.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“We are going to take a break for dinner and then come back,” Annie states ending her sh-peal. “Are there any more comments before we go?”
One of the ladies at the back left corner raises her hand. “I just wanted to say that it makes me so happy to see all of the young people here not only for being here but actively participating in all of this. It's really amazing.”
I hear breaths around me breath in deeply. Nia raises her hand to respond. “I know that that was meant to be a compliment but as a 'young person' in the group, it makes me feel like I'm not expected to have the ability to understand and articulate myself as well as the older people in the room.
An argument erupts.
“In the group that I am a part of we call ourselves youth in order to stop perpetuating power dynamics between the staff and the participants,” Nilani says.
“We need to be responsible for our interpretations,” Matti responds.
“Escapism,” is stated.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
'Systematic Oppression' is scrawled, almost illegible, on the board. It is all beginning to make more sense. I soak in the information as Tinson preaches, “People of color cannot be racist against white people.” I let the idea sit with me.
We are the loudest group in the stands. Little boys are standing, their lacrosse sticks up, waiting for a shirt to be thrown into the crowd. Most of us are facing each other, half paying attention to the game. The metal of the benches sends chills through my body. I pull my jacket tighter around me. The sun is just starting to set behind the stadium making it hard to look toward the field. “Look at Austin!” Sadiki says. A few of us look down at the sideline where Austin Hightower is standing, stick cocked back, ready to launch a t-shirt. The little boys start screaming and glancing over at the scoreboard to see if the camera is heading toward them. “I fucking hate white people.” Sadiki says looking toward the kid's parents. “People got a fuckin starin problem.”
I wonder how long it would take to really piss them off; How obnoxious we'd have to be. Even though I feel like it wouldn't take much, I wonder if they'd ever even have the balls to say anything to us, never mind have the balls to say it to our face.
Dorika, who is sitting in the row above me, looks over to my sister and I. “He doesn't mean you guys,” she says.
Her sister, Kerley, chimes in, “Vicky and Didi don't count; they're hispanic.”
The roar of voices brings me back to my class. I get lost in the debate. Comments fly back and forth. It is getting easier for me to understand them. I know at least half of the words that they are using and could probably use a few of them myself if I tried. I look at the faces around the room, listening intently, gears turning. These kids are probably just like the kids at Deerfield. They've probably been trained for this environment from the day that they were born, given the opportunity to be whatever they want to be and the tools and skils that they need to get there.
I raise my hand. Tinson calls on me after a few more comments. By the time my turn comes what I have to say is a little less on topic than it was originally. “I also just wanted to point out that we should be aware that there are youth of color in the inner city who, like, aren't aware of all the stuff we're talking about here and don't have any opportunity to learn it. “
As my voice goes silent, the tension in the room becomes palpable. It's like the peak of a 97 degree day that slowly grows more humid throughout the morning.
“We don't all live in the inner cities,” one of the girls across the table says.
My chest tightens. “Thats not what I said. I said there are people whose communities and lives we are talking about who have never heard of any of the stuff that..” My sentence trails off, my breaths growing faster as I begin to panic.
Words flow from each of our mouths into a steaming puddle consuming the table between us. “Now, hold on.” Tinson waves his hand trying to get everyone's attention. “Hold on. Explain what you mean. Speak you truth.”
Someone chimes in. “ Yea, speak your truth.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I write:
The words
choke up
in my throat
wanting
needing
to be expressed
needing
to disagree
not to
oppose you
but because
that
is
who I am
opposition
disagreement
conflicting
feelings
thoughts
ideas
perspectives
breaking down
everything.
I know.
You
do not
know everything
Everything
is not
about you
It is me.
This is me.
These
thoughts
words
scars
eyes
that tell stories
if
you would take
the time
to listen.
They are
mine.
I feel
your energy
your 'presence'
expanding
'filling space'
pushing down
on my chest
as it
expands
with every breath
filled
with your
vocabulary
and your
words
conveying my emotion
the same
words
that you use
against me
...
distributing
your power.
It is
silencing.
I want to give people the voice that society has taken from them. I will not allow my voice to be silenced in the process.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
As we finally disperse for dinner, the tension in the air brings me back to that classroom, that conversation that happened first semester of first year in Framing Blackness.
I was silent for half of the walk back to the dorm. The crisp, fall air blew around our hair and the leaves with a bite that made us walk with our hands shoved deep into our pockets.“What are you doing for the rest of the day?” Rae asked me. Papers, readings, classes organized in categories flashed through my head.
My mind was hazy, part of me was still in the classroom having a conversation. “I have a ton of.. ugh..what's it called?”
Rae looked at me and laughed. “What's it called?”she said sarcastically, putting the emphasis on the -alled.
“What?” I questioned, a little annoyed with her making fun of my inability to speak.
“You always sat that...'What's it called?' Its funny.
I thought for a second. “My dad always says it. Probably cuz thats how its translated from italian or cuz when he's trying to think of how to say something its cuz he doesn't know how to say it in English.” I had never really thought about that before..
We came back together after dinner and tried to sort things out. People talked, listened, debated, accepted, and apologized but the tension did not seem to be relenting.
“I just..I feel as though this is something that I need to say and need to put out there to the group.” One of the men began speaking. “I don't really know what to do at this point because I'm so afraid of offending someone now, especially as a white man in this group and I'm not sure how to deal with it. I came here to participate and be vocal and now I feel like I need to just sit back in the shadows so that I don't offend anyone. And I..” He opened his hands that were palms together in front of him, as if in prayer.
My hand went up. I waited for Matti to point at me before I began speaking. “I know how real it is to afraid of offending someone. If you think this is bad, I can assure you that Hampshire College is worse.” I laugh, taking a deep breath, trying to stop my voice from shaking. “I feel like I've spent the last year working up the courage to be able to talk about these subjects in groups. As scary as it is to put yourself out there, not talking about it only helps to perpetuate system that were talking about.” I lean forward, putting my elbows on my knees and looking at the man who had spoken up, occasionally glancing around the room. “This is why were here. To understand each other and work through our thoughts. We need to be able to make mistakes, we need to be able to confront them progressively and we need to be able to learn from them. Its all a necessary part of confronting the system.”
I take another deep breath. “Thanks you,” Annie says, though her statement is not necessarily directed at me. I sit back in my chair and continue to observe, as I do. I have said my piece.

Your language is my world blurred by the lens you see it through

The words
choke up
in my throat
wanting
needing
to be expressed
needing
to disagree
not to
oppose you
but because
that
is
who I am
opposition
disagreement
conflicting
feelings
thoughts
ideas
perspectives
breaking down
everything
I know

You
do not
know everything
Everything
is not
about you
It is me.
This is me.
These
thoughts
words
scars
eyes
that tell stories
if
you would take
the time
to listen.
They are
mine.

I feel
your energy
your 'presence'
expanding
'filling space'
pushing down
on my chest
as it
expands
with every breath
filled
with your
vocabulary
and your
words
conveying my emotion
the same
words
that you use
against me
...
distributing
your power

Feeling Reality

You are not supposed to feel like that
You don't
You do not feel
You absorb
..the images
....the harmony of sounds
......the emotion
........the feeling
You do not feel.
You see it...them
What you know you should not be seeing
They are not real
They are images on a TV
Images that you are not supposed to see.

Their bodies move
with your eyes
and your hand
running over
the curves
of your own body.
His rock hard
Heavy over hers
Your soft hand
Heavy over your own.
You do not feel.
She is not real.

Darkness: Meditation (Revised)

The luminescent glow from the compact florescent light bulb fills my room. My homework is stacked in a pile in front of me; each subject half done. I can’t focus. I have gotten to the 15th level of Tetris and now have a new high score of 164 seconds on the expert level of minesweeper. My head is wandering through places beyond where I am now; places of the past, the future; things that have been and never will be.
My fingers pull open the hard, worn green cover of my journal from the mountain school trying to find a topic for this assignment. Having used it as my english journal for over a year now, I have forgotten the words that first graced its crisp white pages, though the person who wrote them has never faded.

Week 1- The flashlight glows. Thick light allows me to see, yet beyond its boundaries is darkness. Outside the darkness is so much deeper. My head races with the thought of my fear of walking back to the dorm. It’s more of a discomfort actually. The flashlight flickers…my roommate is trying to sleep. I remove my glasses and lay down thinking about what tomorrow holds, the changing shadows around my room, and the unknown darkness outside my window.

My eyes dart around my room. The rows of books and organized folders are disrupted only by a small pile of college papers on my bookshelf. I reach for it, the entropy it creates driving me crazy, but my eyes catch the spiral wire binding of my little gray notebook from before I came to Deerfield.
Very few words can be found on these pages. In a world where words limited people to tangible instances, images revealed so much more. Fire fills the first page. Burn. The word is drawn melting down the white paper like ice. I had tried to pull away from my cousin as he held my finger above the flame. “Trust me.” His teenage hand grabbed my little neck. Our eyes met. There was a certainty in him that I admired. His thumb scratched the flint feeding the red into the yellow and blue that danced above the lighter. My eyes grew wide as my finger passed through the flame. I pulled it away protectively, stumbling as he let go of me. At a safe distance, I examined it closely. My pink skin had no sign of damage: visual or sensational. I turned my hand over again and again looking at it from different angles in snapshots between stealing glances at my cousin. I walked back over to him, giving him my finger. “Do it again.” In a trance this time I watched my finger pass through the flame. I felt its heat, though it didn’t burn. My eyes grew wide, the image of the flame filling my eyes with light. The curiosity inside me grasped for it, igniting my obsession with fire, my curiosity toward the world.

Week 3- This stream is beyond words. Everything melts together into perfection. The rocks can still be seen through the moss. The water glimmers as it rushes downstream in flowing waves around the bend. It slides past me down the small waterfall and into a pool beyond coming to a smooth rest, with only small ripples to inform me that the water is still moving.
I keep looking upstream at the rushing water, the unbalanced rock formations and trees on both sides. I haven’t really tried identifying them yet, for now I just want to see everything. The sun keeps going in and out. I’m cold. I think Ill go set up my shelter now and leave this scene behind. I wonder if it’ll change in the morning…

I turn the page of the little wire-bound notepad, reading through my life like a picture book. Consecutive circles imitate the circle of light that emanated from the television on my thirteenth birthday. That night, in a basement room with only a rug and a tv, my friends and I cuddled into the blankets trying to scare each other through the entirety of The Ring. As the tape ended, the sound of the screen going fuzzy, penetrated our innocent laughter. Joking turned to panic. “Turn it off.” Adrenalin rushed through my body as I scrambled toward the television that no one else would go near.
“Its just a movie guys,” I said calmly, my rationale fighting the atmosphere around me. To this day I have yet to find a movie that scares me. Just as ghosts, witches, and vampires cluttered my reading lists in elementary and middle school, psychological horror films fill the dvd collection on the bookshelf next to me. The demon child and a video tape that left you with seven days to live has since been replaced by serial killers who torture their victims before killing them. What makes people go insane? The question took over me.
On the other side of the page was a hole. Not in the paper, it was a drawing; a portal into insanity. A sketch filled with anger and hatred, like when someone punches through a wall. The shiny graphite reminds me of the glow of city lights that I wandered through in my childhood dream. Wolves chased us through streets that are familiar to me now but at that age were just fantasy. Hiding in the night’s shadows, adrenalin pulsed through my body. I remember fear of being hurt, being found, though on some level it almost felt like a game.

Week 4- The games started then. Smoldering pieces of wood were being tossed back and forth and through the air. I joined, picking the fire out of the ashes; feeling both its coldness and its heat. By the end I found myself holding a small log smoldering at one end. By blowing on it we were able to create a flame; it only lasted a few seconds but still it was there. I cast it into the fire before walking back to the dorm. In the light of the common room, I realized that my hands were black with charcoal and I had a welt in my palm. Before I washed my hands I took a picture. There are so many ways of remembering. I wish they could all be permanent.

Carefully rendered depictions of Eminem’s tattoos take up the next two pages of the notebook. His words still flow through me like they had when I started listening to him when I was 11. “See everything you say is real and I respect you cuz you tell it.” I’m lost in the memory of his voice; the memory of rapping on the bus ride to and from lacrosse games.
“There’s no score this game, girls.” I heard Michelle’s encouraging words beyond the beat in my head phones. “Just focus on what we’ve been working on.” Ground balls, defensive positioning, place my shots. I imagined the scenarios as I hopped down the stairs of the bus onto the soft finely ground gravel of the parking lot next to the field. My cleats rolled over the kept grass and newly painted lines defining the field. No score, no numbers, just explode forward, toward the ball. Everything built up in me though time slowed down. I bent low, putting my body between the ball and the other team. Her blond ponytail bounced over her shoulders as I pushed her slender body out of my way with little effort.
“There’s no score.” The words echoed in my head. I picked up the ball and shifted direction, cradling around her one foot placed swiftly in front of the other. Feeling her presence as I reached half field, I switched the ball over to my left hand. I had the stick skills but I knew I’d never have her endurance. I can pick up every ground ball but I will always have to work twice as hard to make it to the goal.
“Cut!” I yelled, relying on my friends to help me move the ball up the field. My body tightened as the word left my mouth. Words have always had a huge affect on me, the verbalization that can never truly express the emotion they emerge from. The rush. My team formed a line to the goal. Release. With all the energy I had left, I passed the ball up the field and left it to them to make the goal.
“Good game girls.” Michelle told us as the bus drove off of the gravel and onto the pavement. “You worked hard out there.” Everyone was quiet on the way back to the city. Sitting alone curled up in my seat with my headphones on and the sun beating through my window, I trace the scars on my arm with my finger. 7 ground balls, 1 steal, a goal, and a loss. “She don’t know what it was like for people like us growing up.” For once I wished we could compete but sometimes his lyrics were all we had: his lyrics and our own scars. The pattern of red lines on my pale skin is only evidence of what goes on in my head. My eyes raise, scanning the variety of emotions on the faces of the people around me. How can fear make something, someone, so misunderstood? I’m so logical, so level headed in every way and yet it’s so irrational to see beauty in this, in pain, in who I am.

Week 6- I worry about my sister. It’s weird to see the contrast between us and yet such similarity. I wonder if it’s my fault that she feels so much pain; if Im the one who taught her. I hate time and the way society works. I despise change yet it’s what defines my life. I yearn for it, for the familiar and ability to stay connected. But at times I desire the future and at others wish time would stop. But how do we know if it ever starts and stops? And if it does how can we make every moment we’re given unforgettable and still be guaranteed happiness in the future?

The chaos of lines on the next page jump off the paper into my head; that feeling of chaos that had been poured out onto the paper that day in math class fills me. Lines that started, calculated, lead pulled slowly creating the strait parallel lines. Around me my classmates were excited for the prospect of summer while I created pictures from the shapes on the dry erase board, numbers adding to the chaos in my head. My body shook as the lines became crosshatched, faster, filling white lined paper with a darkness that has always been there to remind me of who I was: a pattern of frantically scrawled lines with more meaning than words could ever portray.
That’s how I spent my last day of 9th grade, my last day ever at Chelsea high school. A constant war was being fought inside my head. There was no emotion behind my accomplishment of getting into Deerfield Academy. When my body was weak from not eating and my mind was tired from fighting so hard, my love for the people I was close to was what drove me forward, even as I felt like I was being drawn into that hole more and more. Standing on its uncertain edge, wavering, knowing that I was leaving them all behind for the best private boarding school in New England, and knowing that staying would only be surrendering to a strong gust of wind, I waited for the moment where I would fall into complete emptiness, physical and emotional.
Am still the same person who filled these pages; the person who tried desperately to control her shaking hand, the only means of letting everything she kept bottled inside her out?

Week 8- Its all come to seem so normal. I remember the fear now. The drive to keep everything hidden but most importantly the reason for it. The perception of society…the misunderstanding that creates oppression. The need to be understood and yet have something that’s only your own that no one can take away. Until you realize that they can. That society has that ability, literally.

There are voices outside my door. They take me back to sophomore year, to study hall, when the chaos inside my head would spiral out of control just like it did at Chelsea High. Confined, I was overwhelmed with the urge to break free from my body, knowing, the whole time that I was miserable, that it could always be worse. I knew worse, and I knew that once I had made the choice to leave it behind I could never go back.
The last page has a drawing of a pillow with holes in it, like it had been sliced up with a knife. I look over to my own pillow, around my room. I have one poster of Eminem in this room, one lord of the rings calendar, one poster of two female vampire lovers, one photo of a sunset through the silhouette of tree branches and a bunch of pictures, pictures of my friends, pictures of me smiling. My mouth curves upward looking at them. I turn back to my notebook remembering all the nights I spent at home wishing that I could sleep forever, all the nights I spent in study hall sophomore year trying to convince my sister not to kill herself, all the nights I spent at the mountain school gazing at the stars. I close both of my notebooks, my past and my present, before climbing into bed. I run my hands over my pillows smooth surface and then place them under the cool underside searching for Raja. I wrap my arms around the stuffed tiger and close my eyes noticing that the darkness still surrounds me but it isn’t in me anymore. Still am I the same person?

Week 10- “Now your eyes see right through me.” Its sad how the knowledge of one small thing, concealed but always present, can alter someone’s opinion so much…to the point that identity is forced to be concealed…forever unexpressed.