Emotional Response Micro-Personal Essay

My dad had this toy dog with wheels instead of feet. A string was attached to its neck

so it would follow wherever you go. I didn’t think much of it. I thought it was boring,

so I took my stamp kit and pressed a blue flower all over it. Later that day, I spotted

my little sister Chloé (who was 4 at the time) playing with the dog. My dad was in the

living working from home. I looked at it as an opportunity to get my little sis in

trouble. 

So I yelled, “Papa, looked what Chloé did to your dog!” 

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I was a terribly mean older sister. I took advantage

of my authority and often controlled my sister’s every move, thought, and feeling.

Sometimes we’d get along and have fun, but most of the time I’d come up with some

sort of diabolical plan to make her cry or get her in trouble. It’s like I fed off of her

misery. It was satisfying for me to see someone else (specifically my sister) suffer the

consequences for something I did. 80% of the time of got off scot-free. I felt invisible,

unstoppable. I wouldn’t be surprised if I laughed like a menacing evil villain. 

At the same time, I knew about my dad’s anger issues. I knew that he’d over react,

possibly throw something and curse in French. I smiled at the thought of how much

trouble Chloé was about to get into (and she didn’t even know). 

“Oh no! Chloé!” my dad wailed. 

“Yeah, Chloé. You shouldn’t do that,” I said, adding salt to the wound. I really wanted

to see my dad get angry. Now that I think about it, I guess I just wanted to come off

as the “better” child, get more admiration from my parents and get the better toys,

candy, etc. I often looked at our relationship as a competition. Though I don’t

remember seeing my parents give more attention to my little sister. Maybe I just took

the stereotypical mean older sibling example from TV shows like “Rugrats”. Ironically,

my favorite character was Angelica. 

Human's of New York and Healing

"Sometimes it feels like I'm not part of anything. There are so many people
here, you'd think that I's be able to make friends with on of them. But it
always seems like everyone has go their own thing going on, to their own
group of friends that they hang out with. Most weekends I just take a long
walk, or go to a restaurant by myself. I've dine some neat things alone, and
I'm glad that I did those things, but I'm really getting to the point where
I'd also like to experience things with other people. Everyone tells me:
'You should do this,' or 'You should do that.' But nobody says
'Let's do this,' or 'Let's do that.'"

I’d like to take a page (perhaps a whole research paper) to talk about the trending blog, Humans of New York (HNY) and it’s effects on healing. According to it’s creator, HNY is “an exhaustive catalogue of New York City’s inhabitants”. The blog has 10 million social media followers, owing much of it’s success to humans just like you and me. People are fascinated by a stranger’s life. In my future paper, I would look at comments on portraits left by social media users to show HNY’s healing influence on the public as well as the subjects themselves. 

Photographer Brandon Hony aimlessly walks about the city streets and takes pictures of random passerby. He posts the photos via social media each with a quoted caption that delves deep into that person’s life. The photos range from 2-year-olds wearing tutus to elderly couples holding hands. Not all photos and their attached captions reveal a subject’s personal conflict or life trauma, but the ones that do remind me of everything that we’ve discussed in class (and possibly more).

There’s a feeling of ambiguous intensity when looking at a person, but that feeling turns in to empathy and wonder after reading their story. You feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable. It’s that kind of basic human vulnerability that we all find familiar, but it’s somehow surprising when we notice it in others. It’s an open question as to why we have such public confidence, and such private doubts, anxieties, and dreams. 

"My mom left me with my grandparents so she could prepare
a way for us in America. But my grandparents passed away, so
I came to America before my mother was ready. There were eight
of us in one apartment. In my mind at the time, I thought that if I
began to mis behave, I'd be sent back home. So one day I got in a
fight at school, and when the teacher tried to restrain me, I hit her
with a chair. I was only nine years old, but from that moment on,
I became a system baby. My mom gave me up and I went to a
foster home, then a boy's home, then jail, then prison. When you
go to prison, they make you strop naked, spread your ass cheeks,
and cough. I refused to do it. So they beat me and threw me alone
into the box. And I remember sitting in there alone, reflecting on
my life, and where it had ended up. I started thinking about the
other members of my family. My sister was a registered nurse.
My grandmother owned two houses. I realized that success was in
my DNA. For the first time, I developed a thought that prison was
not a place that I belong." 

When you think about it, it’s kind of sad that you’ll never really know what other’s are experiencing. Even though we all have eyes that can make out a face and body, the true image of who we are is often softened and distorted. The portraits of HNY shows a kind of psychological exoskeleton in all people. These faces hold anxiety, trying to protect themselves from the pain of the past. These faces have had years of cracks and hollows but grow back again and again, until they develop a more sophisticated, often mysterious emotional structure. Some portraits are passive, default expressions—like their strong emotion is buried under the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

HNY gives you this moment of awareness that people have a private and mysterious other life they’ll never know about. It gives you just a peak of that complex and vivd story, reminding you of the smallness of our perspective, making it impossible to draw any meaningful conclusion about people, their pasts, and their resulting life. If I were walking on the streets of New York and passed one of these faces, I wouldn’t ponder their past. These portraits and quotes resonant a certain connection, while still getting a morsels of their human experience. 

In my research, I would take a closer look at each portrait to define a connection with healing. In essence, it would resemble The Clothesline Project essay, finding several groups of portraits and separating them into categories of healing according to voice and even expression. 

"I had a rough time in high school. I was in a very deep depression.
I've always been on the heavy side, so I got bullied a lot because
of my size. I didn't have any friends. There wasn't a male figure in my
life to talk to. Some people cared about me, but I blocked them out of
my life. Someone told the school guidance counselor that they'd heard
me talking about suicide, so I got sent to the psych hospital for nine
days. I was the oldest one there. I met kids who were a lot younger than
me, and who'd been through a lot worse things. One of the girls had
been raped. The younger kids would come to me for advice, and for
the first time I felt like a leader. I left the hospital with a different
mindsent. I realized that I wasn't on earth to be helped,
but to help others." 

Writing about Suicide

My 5th grade teacher committed suicide. I never really thought much about it, but after reading this essay, I can see how a class like “Literary Suicide” would appeal to students. Just like this class! There are students who have had experience with traumatic life events, and others not so much. But even those who didn’t, still manage to make a connection. We’re human after all, it’s what we do. As Jon wrote in his diary, “While I recognize the risk of comparing our experiences to the terrible struggle of someone considering suicide, I can’t avoid thinking how similar our worlds are.” (295) 

Jon didn’t know anyone who committed suicide, nor has he ever had suicidal thoughts, but he still managed to come out of the class with a cured mind. Jon is a good example of someone who doesn’t necessarily need to heal through writing, but relates to it in a way that changes him (my experience in this class). Then there are those like the female student mentioned on page 307—she revealed her experience with sexual abuse in the diaries, and left the class seeking therapy. This class is solid proof of just how effective writing and healing can be! 

What’s more, it shows how willing people can be when sharing their personal accounts on traumatic subjects. Almost every student gave Berman permission to have their diary read allowed. I think it helped that Berman kept the reader anonymous. Hmm…makes me wonder then why someone people would want to stay anonymous while others have their names attached to their writing. I guess there’s a feeling safety and mystery when a writer is incognito. When I personally read or hear writing with no author identified, I feel more connect for some odd reason. Maybe it’s because names are arbitrary when it comes to the actual healing process. 

Jon uses the word “distance intimacy” to describe the sensation of having one’s work read anonymously. I think we should do something similar in class. Have us all write a personal response to some topic and have it read allowed in class anonymously. I feel like it would make the class more connected. 

What really struck me in the reading was Jon’s 6th diary entry where the most memorable diary entry read in class was his own. It’s neat to have your words read by someone else and have people listen to your words. In an analysis of that diary entry Jon says, “I sometimes felt as if I were them.” Just shows that we’re all staring in the same movie. We might think we’re all unique and individual, but we’re actually very much the same. 

Voices from the Line: The Clothesline Project as Healing Text

When my PopPop passed away, everyone in the family got to sort through all his clothes and pick something they wanted. I have a green sweater and one of his basic white tee-shirts. Whenever I put either on, I feel like he’s hugging me. His scent still lingers in the threads. 

In a sense, clothes are like ghosts of the self. The Clothesline Project not only addresses domestic violence and assault, but it also captures the body, shape, and spirit of the woman that once was, will be, and aspires to be. At first I thought it would make more sense if the text written on the shirts were published in a book. The writing was deep and poetic To be honest, I was shocked that pretty much every shirt had so much substance and depth. It was haunting. 

Julier explains this type of writing and healing as a “multivoiced witness to a shared cultural experience.” (359) It’s a communal, global, even historical, gathering of women. It’s crazy to think that since the dawn of civilization woman have been treated with such torment and disrespect. To this day, women are still abused. Some don’t even have the opportunity to voice their story and heal due to culture barriers. 

Even thought it’s considered a stereotype these days, woman are often portrayed as the domestic dame hanging up the laundry on a clothesline in the backyard. I think that taps into the project. Women are the caretakers of the world. Julia pulls several tee-shirts as examples of how they produced various methods of reading. Some address the perpetrator directly, others bask in their bravery and ultimately change. 

I like how Julier claims that “space is precisely its its power to heal.” (360) I think this might be interesting to discuss in class—this notion of space and what it provides in terms of writing and healing. Does it refer to the event? The blank canvas on the tee-shirt? A particular woman sense of self?