"For some reason I believe if I write it down, I can get rid of it."
Today in calls we talked about the process of recognizing, accepting, and then deconstructing the walls that imprison our true selves. "For some reason I believe if I write it down, I can get rid of it." Thus, is writing the ultimate tool that enables you to deconstruct the things, ideas, people that restrict you? So rip down the walls through writing--by deconstructing something someone has told you and you feel is not right...do not use a filter, do not suppress emotion--just think, emote, and write...the right way is the write way.
One of your peers said in a blog entry, "I myself have yet to rally up and fight; however, as I examine myself and my age group, I cannot help but cling to a hope that our anger is manifesting itself towards a brave voice."
You can fight through your words, you can let your anger be the catalyst for your thoughts--just make sure you give your ideas hope through expressing yourself in a brave voice.
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9 comments:
Reza??? anyway...
I love to write, and I always have, but I don’t think it’s the ultimate tool in deconstructing the walls around you. In fact I think writing itself is one of the walls, because it isn’t always easy to turn thoughts into words. There have been times when I’ve felt so angry or so upset for reasons I couldn’t exactly describe, and trying to write about these emotions just left me with an ongoing list of adjectives that could describe any situation. Sometimes I’m thinking so quickly that even if I do have concrete thoughts in my head that I can turn into words, they come and go like racecars on the Daytona Speedway (thanks to Tara for helping me out with the name of that.) But then there are other times where it’s easy to take things from my mind and mold them into sentences, which them become paragraphs, which then become an endless documentation of my brain. I endeavor for this to be one of those times.
Here at Berwick, I’ve been indirectly taught many things, just through observing the people around me. I feel as though I’ve been taught to be a certain way, not to cross certain people, and to generally just accept the way things are. Every year that I’ve been here (which is only 4) I’ve noticed myself becoming less and less tied down to these “rules” that I’d submitted myself to. These rules help make up the wall of society, and I’m proud to think that I’m gaining the strength I need to full distance myself from this wall. This falls into the whole recognition, acceptance, action series: I recognized that it really wasn’t worth it to be so self-conscious. I definitely still do have self-conscious moment, because I think that’s a part of being human. We are conscious people, and we’re aware of things around us, and we’re especially aware of ourselves. The key thing it to not let this self-consciousness take over your life. Sometimes, being self-conscious is just about noticing a flaw in yourself, and seeing something you can fix. Since the deconstruction of these walls is all about progress and making changes, it’s normal to have some self-consciousness because it points out another wall you can deconstruct.
Though I argued today that acceptance can come during action, I also agree that it can come before action. In my case, it had to come before, because there was no one saying “Shelby, you need to start thinking differently.” I think in cases where the pressure to change is put on by an outside force, than acceptance can come during action. But, when it’s self-assigned, I think you need your own willpower to turn acceptance into action. Looking back, I still don’t think there was a major turning point, I wasn’t trying to be someone I’m not, I just wasn’t showing myself entirely. I was more reserved, and I was sick of having to live out a lot of my life through interior monologue (like Dostoyevsky’s narrator does, although I’d like to believe I was a lot less extreme and/or crazy). It was more like me telling myself, “hey, I’m OK with who I am. Why not just be the person I am inside on the outside too?” I didn’t become a new person over night; I just began speaking more. It’s not like I was mute before, but I was more apt to just listen and then go along with others’ ideas. By taking the initiative in letting my voice be heard, I didn’t have to hold myself back from saying what I feel. My words (as in my speaking voice) were my action. They definitely have gotten me into trouble every now and then, but in 99% of those cases, I’m not sorry for what I said. I’d rather have someone be mad at me for saying what I mean, than have the same person like me because I keep everything inside, while being fake to their face. That’s the part of the “Berwick wall” that I’m so eager to just completely detach myself from. I’ve done my best to stop being fake in all aspects, and I admire people who’ve done an even better job at it than I have. Now I just hope that all the others who are still struggling to get past this can find a way to overcome the whole obstacle of being fake, of carrying on artificial relationships, and clinging on to the rules we were taught when we entered this place. Let’s all break down the wall together because, with mere month left until we’re gone for good, there’s really nothing to lose.
I'm a sensitive person, but I normally don't express my feelings openly (especially around people I don't know very well), but I keep them internal. The last time I became openly emotional over something was when my sister, Hannah, was telling me about the way people judge one of her friends. I think that other people’s judgment can act as a wall if we chose to let it affect us. It can lead to feelings of oppression as well as conformity… if we conform in order to escape this judgment. The only solution to break down the walls of judgment is to be yourself without fearing what others may think of you.
So the situation I’m about to describe isn’t an unusual one, but it is definitely a more extreme case of a common problem. Here’s the basic situation: One of my sister’s friends always seems to carry the blame for things he hasn’t done. Teachers constantly single him out and point their fingers at him because they think he’s the cause of the problem, but often times he’s not doing anything. Hannah, my sister, told me how a teacher started yelling at him for making fun of someone, when really everyone else was and he was the ONLY kid in the class who was defending him. He wasn’t even just sitting there innocently, he was sticking up for him, which makes the situation that much worse. It’s not only teachers, but kids judge him because he struggles with school and this makes them feel unjustly superior. This is a situation which feeds into itself in an endless circle, because the more people judge him, the more he feels like he has to give up and quit. Once people see this, they judge him that much harder.
Another thing is, once you stick a label on someone and repeatedly drill into their mind that this label is who they are, the person almost start to believe it and it becomes hard to escape this label. People label him as a trouble maker, a slacker, and think that that's the end of his story. They simplify him to these labels and in a way, this hurts themselves too because they are inhibiting themselves from knowing who he really is.
Also, I’m being hypocrite right now, because, I know I let other people’s judgments affect me way more than they should. I’m at the phase of recognizing the wall, but not quite ready to break it down. I also need to work on not forming walls for other people. By this I mean, not judging other people and inhibiting who they want to be. I never think of this while I'm judging people, but its true, and every time I judge people I'm preventing them from being free, and discovering who they are. It’s so crucial that people don’t let this wall of judgment come caving down on them (or build walls for other people) because judgement is a barrier between being who other's want you to be, and being who you are. If you let this barrier affect you then its like your living in your life in the control of someone else's hands. So, i guess I just want to say, for me and for whoever else might be stuck with this wall, don't let judgements control you and don't control others through judgements.
I envy Shelby. Sometimes I wish I had the courage to say whatever I am thinking whenever I want. I have such a sensor in my head that blocks out all of things I want to say, but that I think might hurt someone. Especially those close to me. I am consciously and constantly being taken advantage of by my family members. I am the compassionate one, the one who will jump through hoops to keep everyone happy. Whether it be driving completely out of the way for my mom or doing the dishes again when I know my siblings haven't touched a dirty dish in weeks, I am the go-to girl when it comes to being guilted into doing something. The funny thing about it is, that I am completely aware of it. I accept it because saying no would create chaos and distress, and knowing that I was the cause of another persons problems would eat away at me. I need to deal with it. I realize that I need to stand up for myself, that in the long run my simple 'not this time,' will make a difference for my own well-being.
The hardest part of this kind of 'disease' lies between me and one of my best friends. Living hundreds of miles apart, I still feel as though we are in some way soul mates. Having not seen her in months we instantly click back into our friendship, no small talk or uncomfortable hugs. Although I feel that we do connect on many levels, I know that her environment has affected her in a way that causes us to differ. I worry about her, she is spontaneous to the extreme, manic depressive, and probably all kinds of bipolar. During our time together over the past four years she has often made comments about things, or told me about things that she has done that I totally disagree with. For fear of disappointing, hurting, or causing her self-doubt, I refrain of my comments completely. I dismiss what she said, or give a short answer, changing the subject. I know that we are all delicate to some extent, but I realized during my last visit to see her that my non-action may actually be hurting more than it is helping. Omitting my opinion is not only enabling her to step all over me, but it is keeping her from knowing my thoughts, which are valuable to her. "He is the sickest Dad, he is the man." she said as we left her friend's apartment, saying goodbye to his narcotic-addicted father. I cringed, I said nothing. What I really wanted to say was, "stop treating your family like crap, you have one of the only normal loving families in this entire town and you take it for granted. I cannot believe you are so oblivious to how lucky you are. That man has addiction and financial problems on top of basically failing as a parent. He is sitting on the couch eating a tv dinner and literally drooling on himself, and he is the coolest dad you've ever met?" I wish I had. It's comments like that which make me nervous for her. One of the closest people to me, a recent patient out of drug rehab herself. I should be more honest with her, challenge her sometimes absurd nature. Instead I run into that wall that Dostoyevsky knows so well. The wall that keeps her in a good mood, but fails to let her see what I see, something that seems to obvious that it makes me crazy. I hope to be more pro-active like Shelby, however my wall is a hard one to knock down as it means possibly hurting those around me. I realize it is worth it, but the willingness has to be there in order to connect my thoughts with my actions, deconstructing this wall of hidden opinions and self-assurance. I'm afraid that my running headfirst into this wall any longer may cause brain damage.
I really wish I could do that random survey, even though i have no idea what "Social Capital" is...
My name is Alex, and I have issues speaking my mind. I think i know why too...it's mostly fear. fear to go out on a limb, fear to show people who i am then have it shot down, fear to fail, fear to get owned, etc etc etc... so thats my wall, fear. to tell you the truth, i sorta hate it. i mean, it's sorta owns me in English classes, like i'm pretty sure i'm getting a 0 in class participation now and i think i've been getting 0's my whole HS career. Its not like its failing me... you know, C's and B's... good enough right? its sorta embarrassing, really, how much of a "wuss" i am at that kinda stuff haha. anyway, its sorta been going on so long, that walls gotten so high, its just like i've given up. don't care about it anymore. don't really care about anything, i'm pretty lazy too. Legit don't remember the last time I put all my effort into something, not even swimming or anything (i swim btw). I just sorta go until its good enough then stop. Don't touch that wall, hell, i don't even step in its shadow. Yah, plus side, i guess is that people don't say too much shit that pisses me off...so not much to write about there.
Actually except Mrs. Bowden. She always calls me andrew and idk why. every time i see her, "Hey andrew" and i'm like "uhh...hi?" cause she's clearly looking at me and i'm like the only kid around. So thats kinda sad, that she doesn't know my name. After, what is it, four years? two years of being on swim team with her? I mean i realize its mrs. bowden and she's a lil um... yah, but still its just a name lol...
I did what you said and just wrote, very unfiltered, a bit long winded. Also forgive me if this entry comes out a bit strange. I just got home from a 4 hour film on Woodstock and now I'm listening to "The Psychedelic Sounds Of" by the 13th Floor Elevators. Not to mention I'm pretty tired. So yeah...my mind is in an interesting place.
After thinking about this question all day, I came up with the ultimate "wall" that I am currently facing in my life. The wall that I face everyday is the wall of scheduling and societies view on time and specifically time management. Everyday of the week I wake up at a set time with an alarm. Everyday of the week I shout the words "good morning" at the same time. Everyday I attend the same classes, which begin and end with a bell. Then I drive to my hockey practice. After the practice, I drive home to face hours of homework. I finish my homework and am so tired that I just crawl into my bed and sleep. The next day I wake up and repeat the process. When the weekend comes, it is mostly spent recovering and doing the overflow homework that builds up over the course of the week.
This may sound depressing, boring, terrible, or a combination of many negative adjectives. It's strange though, it is not the school, the hockey, or the homework that drives me insane , it is the things that I am unable to do that depress me the most. For years, I have been having many non-school related ideas and goals for myself, that I have had to dismiss almost instantly because of time. I am sure you are looking for examples, and I have them. I have always been interested in experimenting with art, especially painting related. Last year I bought myself a set of acrylic paints in hopes of being able to sit, paint, and see if I enjoyed it or not. I have yet to have the time to use my paint set. I made a goal to myself this summer to learn a new song on guitar every day and create a play list over time containing all the songs that I have been learning that particular month. Over the last six months I've wanted to take guitar, drum, and vocal lessons, but I have been unable to commit to any of the three due to time issues.
So why is our society so obsessed with the idea of scheduling and time. I wish that I could enjoy a day with nothing to do, to explore, to create, and to use my mind. As weird as it sounds, with such dense school scheduling, I do not think enough. My life is lived as a routine and classroom life is a struggle to maintain that grade instead of to really learn. There is no time to learn. Our society is so deeply rooted in a schedule for the same reason that we search to quantify the universe and truly define that "2x2=4". There is no time to think. There is no time to explore. There is no time to create.
So how does this tie in with "Notes From the Underground" and the idea of tearing down the walls that surround you? I have laid out my largest wall in the last three paragraphs and I have now achieved a better understanding of it. But how can I tear down this wall and break through it? It is hard to speculate on my future schedule with a college transition period coming next year. As for now though, I am going to schedule some guitar lessons, go grab my acrylic paints, and continue my biography on Jimi Hendrix that I was forced to put down when school started again two weeks ago.
That was therapeutic. Goodnight.
I suppose it's time to unwind now. And I'm going to try to think as little as possible when I write this, for that's the most honest I can be right now in doing so. Hopefully this entry won't completely defeat the purpose of the original post, and I will try to put Katie's phrase "brave voice" to good use.
I will start by saying that this year has shown me a wall if I've ever seen one. This year was terrible in so many ways for me. I started it off well, and somehow, it went downhill from there. I made decisions that I shouldn't have; there are things that I did that I regret. I created a huge wall for myself around the turn of my seventeenth birthday, and the details are a little graphic to get into on this blog. But I'll do my best to illustrate what I was feeling at the time, and I'm betting someone reading this later will understand what really happened.
Out of all of the emotions that came out of my regret, the number one feeling is shame, easily. I live in Rye and have friends here that I have been close to and known since kindergarten. Unlike most friends that split up when going into high school (five schools between the eight of us), we have remained undeniably close. Sometimes it even surprises me at how we've managed to not get completely sick of each other and kill someone. We see each other very often now, but during junior year, with the time schedule that we face at Berwick as Sam mentioned, I had no way of seeing them as much. The divorced parents didn't help all that much, because it seems as though one is always afraid of me loving the other more. Involving time, the commute was simply exhausting, and ironically it probably contributed more towards bitterness than family bonding. Both of them also got remarried within the past two years.
My lifestyle changed fairly radically when my dad met his new wife. He and my mother divorced when I was ten or eleven, I can't quite remember the exact date. My dad got "custody" of me because the woman who I call my mother is not my biological mother, she was only my adoptive mother from five years old on, due to another unfortunate death. Before I go off on a tangent about how silly their marriage was, I will say that my dad and I lived together, alone, in this house for six years. We became very close and did a lot of traveling together, across the country and across the world. I didn't cherish it as much as I should have. Every night, he would pick me up from some goofy sports practice and tell me that my "color look[ed] good" that day, even though that's only because I was a chubby little middle schooler who couldn't play soccer and was probably red from anger from hating my teammates. Then we'd come home, and he would have some fantastically delicious dinner waiting for the both of us (he is the greatest cook in the entire world, as often as I try to deny it) in the little, old, wooden kitchen of our 257 year old house. We talked a lot. I could tell that my friends' parents were jealous of the relationship that I had with my dad, and they should have been. It was a nice time when I had a whole lot of love to give.
My dad is now seventy-one years old, and on his seventieth birthday, he hit it off with his new wife, Mindy, who threw him a party and with the help of a little champagne and vodka (in the best way possible), quickly divorced her rich-as-shit husband and decided to be with my dad. I figured that there must be something good about her if she was leaving a ton of money for some crazy old intellectual guy who can't hear to save his life. She didn't suck up to me and call me "honey" and "sweetie" like most step-parents would; she was a no-bullshit kind of gal. So I liked her. However, as soon as they got married, my dad wanted to do all sorts of renovations on our house, the biggest of which was completely redoing our kitchen. This may come off as silly, but my old kitchen was somewhat of a happy place for me, and it represented a peaceful past. We had to spend five months in Mindy's temporary home to redo this goddamn kitchen and make it modern and goofy and shiny and whatnot. This environmental change unwittingly shook me in a way, now that I look back on it. I began spending less and less time with my dad and more time on what seemed to be necessary at the time--school work and trying to identify with a Berwick in which we started to get older and older and I knew that we would eventually have to be our own guides. So I was consumed and devoured by it, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I have always been one to selfishly pride myself on being my own individual person and not caring what others think--I believe we all like to think that at some point in high school. For example, in freshmen year I was a total airhead, clearly too cool for school. I didn't pay any mind to Berwick kids or give a shit about what they thought, except for a select few that reminded me of my Rye friends. But as junior year rolled around and all of these changes started happening around me, I suppose (I am still trying to identify why exactly this happened) that I felt it was easiest to settle with what other Berwick kids were like and conform to what they thought, including understanding their wit and humor and looking like one of your average beautiful students that goes to a rich New England prep school, while still maintaining an inability to fade into the crowd, or I would become a loser again. I developed a sort of false creativity that was kind of haughty and disgusting. I began to act like a different person completely--dressed differently, spoke differently, and looked different. I got into a daily routine of building myself up and breaking myself down with some sort of hope for others' satisfaction and pleasure in the end. I got very deep into it; I dug myself into a very deep hole, surrounded by walls on all sides. I acquired an addiction to trying to please people by being "different," while also refraining from showing any sign of loser that I once had. I have never experienced a sadder time in my life.
I didn't realize this while I was in the midst of it until a couple months ago, when I received a reality check and took a relatively courageous peek into the past. The contrast was rather scary. I immediately had no choice but to turn back to my Rye friends for help, whether I had the time to or not--at this point, I could sacrifice a few A's in school for my own life. It felt so good to be around them again, to be with the people that I had formed lifelong connections with. In elementary and middle school, I think it's safe to say that I was kind of a "loser" on the social hierarchy of jocks, cheerleaders (figuratively, we didn't actually have a middle school cheerleading squad), wannabe jocks, weirdos, and losers. But I was perfectly, 100% okay with that, because I had my other loser friends around me to connect with and to share the same emotions with.
I had tried to push this persona away when I decided to settle into my new settings, and I could not predict the catastrophic effect it would have on me. I lost the respect and trust of a few very important people in my life, and even more importantly, I lost trust in myself, because I was not trusting my own emotions. I was going against them and reconsidering what others would think of me afterwards. What a steaming pile of bullshit that was. Not only did it destroy me, but it turned me into a very disorganized, paranoid, and obsessive person. Part of that is still imprinted on me, and is one of the reasons why I post these blog entries so damn late.
I am still in the process of healing myself. I am doing so by spending time with my friends, eating a ton of cheese, occasionally painting or drawing, and, incidentally, by talking out loud to myself and writing down my thoughts. I am seeing that it is okay to be who I truly and that I may simply be a "normal" person, one who is, well, a lot like everyone else and doesn't have to go out of their way to please others.
Lately, I have found the biggest "wall" of mine to be my parents. For some reason we just haven't really been getting along much at all. It's mostly with my mother. It all started last year when a fight between my mom and I broke out. The sad part is I don't even remember the fight itself; I just remember how it ended. I must have been absorbed by all the anger that the words of the fight didn't matter until my mom decided to end it by her own means. The last word out of her mouth was "deffective". Now normally that word applies to a device which is not functioning correctly. Never in my life would I ever consider a human to be defective. Well I guess that moment in my life I learned to keep a more open mind because that word was directed to me. Not only do I feel as though the word defective should never be applied to a human being, I also strongly feel that it is wrong for a mother to say straight out to her daughter that she is defective. Just now I started to giggle to myself; it's not all my fault if I am, she helped in creating me. So that leads me to believe that if I'm defective, somehow she is too. But anyway... It still irks me that through all of this she has never mustered up anything to be able to appologize for that incident, not even one little "I'm sorry". I've talked to a lot of people about it because I feel like through talking about it I'm less convinced that I am defective. It still astonishes me that I have talked to my dad and he has done absolutely nothing about it. Slowly I have been trying to prove her wrong by making good choices and doing well in school and hockey, but it just doesn't seem to be enough for her. Everytime I might slip up there's that chance that yet again I'll be called defective, and even if she wont say it outloud, I know she'll be thinking it. It still rings out in my head whenever she's disappointed with me. I really think I need to sit down with her and tell her that this really still agitates me, but I'm not entirely sure how to approach it. I feel as though she'll play it off like it's not a big deal, when to me it's a huge deal because it's affecting me everyday and still obviously on my mind because this happened months ago.
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