About Me- Alma Gisela
The person tapping the keyboard
Hello everyone!
I’m Alma, I have no degrees and am a 32-year-old beginner to classic literature. I consider classic literature old stories that are still awesome. Here, I write essays and reflections from personal experience about how they impact my life. I’ve never been able to express what it is about a story that makes me feel so much more than a lecture about life, but I’ve always been that way. They leave me stunned and reflecting, more like daydreaming, for hours, even days.
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky stayed on my mind for about a year. I haven’t dared touch it since then.
On Medium, I’d like to share my experience with stories and have raw conversations with you. By raw conversations, I mean that if some of the things stories show us aren’t sunshine and rainbows, that’s fine. I don’t want to avoid difficult topics. It’s part of life, you know, and we live with it.
Why not listen to each other?
Now that you know what I’ll be writing about, let me tell you a bit about myself. I hope a speedy glance at me will help you understand what lens I’m reading through.
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I was raised in a Mexican household with an emotionally abusive father. The most valued thing was appearance. Apparently, appearance was the sole indicator of success, and I grew up on two hurtful mantras. Then in sixth grade, I experienced bullying that scarred my heart. Along with the two designer mantras, my identity dissolved. I don’t think I ever got it back because ever since, it feels like I’ve had an identity crisis.
I morph and morph and morph.
I’ve become an imitator of worthless nonsense in an attempt to be “cool” and look “appealing”.
I stash away anything that makes me me.
I don’t recognize myself.
And I’m tired of it. I’m tired of morphing around people so I’ll be liked and blend in with the shadows. I’m tired of living by those two mantras and believing that’s what I am. At 32, my biggest life craving is to learn, grow, and reach out because I remember myself differently. Truly, I’m sensitive, short-tempered, nerdy, and loyal. I’ve lost a lot of that. Literature destroyed my blindfold, and I’m not okay with losing myself to worthless nonsense or for worthless nonsense. I want to regain my emotional and intellectual spark.
Selfishly, I’d like to use you.
Without degrees and a brain that has been cobweb-infested for a while, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to analyze literature or how to write awesome posts. My thoughts are jumbled. I’ll ramble. I’ll interpret wrong. But I want to learn. I want to experience the character’s journey, their situations, decisions, and consequences to better understand the world and myself.
Because if I know one thing, it’s this. Stories impact your life. They lift blindfolds, broaden minds, and expand hearts. Sometimes what they show beneath the blindfold is beautiful, and sometimes it isn’t. But as we experience them and develop our minds, we grow roots and branch out to become who we decide we want to be.
Now I’ve got to get started while the courage is coming in full force, because I can’t keep letting the cobwebs infest my brain.
