WP4: Embracing Trauma With My Inner Voice

Coming into college, it has been challenging for me (and I assume many of us) to get past small talk with other students, and dig deeper into conversations. There are only so many “What’s your major?”s and “Where are you from?”s one can ask before reaching a state of social exhaustion.

I am the type of person who values having a tight-knit social circle because I fear stretching myself out too thin, resulting in an internal lack of fulfillment. When I get to know someone, I eventually wish to know their past, their traumas, and how those have influenced who they are today.

I believe the beauty in mutually recognizing another person’s struggles is that despite the challenges they have been through and mistakes they have made, each party wishes to stay connected with the other, allowing both to feel truly understood. Enrolling in Professor Dissinger’s Identity And Diversity Writing 150 class has allowed me to initiate deep, personal conversations through my own pieces. This was a refreshing contrast to most of my conversations in college and my past writing classes.

In my latter years of high school, I took AP Language and Composition and AP Seminar. I was presented with many argumentative pieces, eulogies, historical writings, etcetera to analyze and evaluate. I was taught to follow specific paragraph structures in order to organize my ideas and line of reasoning. Although I enjoyed the predictable structure of rhetorical analyses and researched-based papers, I found myself yearning to write pieces that are based on my personal experiences. Coming into college, I wished to discover my authentic voice as a writer.

The beginning of this class pushed me to introduce myself via past influential experiences, which undoubtedly would be my loss of loved ones, notably my parents. This obviously is not a topic I would casually bring up in conversation with those I do not know too well. I have to admit that in college, it makes me slightly uneasy when people start asking questions such as “Are your parents strict?” “What do they do for a living?” “Do you call them often?” to which I must remind myself to speak in present tense.

I have realized that when interacting with friends, I would blatantly tell them about what happened to my parents but I would not want to make a “big deal” out of everything, so my emotions were concealed. This would create a barrier preventing my friends to get to know me better.

My writing allows me to talk in past tense and embrace my losses without suppressing feelings or beating around the bush. When I am writing I do not feel the need to replace my inner voice with a fake smile or falsely admit that “I’m getting over it though.” In a sense, it feels like therapy, as if I am unleashing a part of myself that I am skeptical of displaying in person.

Although I was scared to coat a layer of vulnerability to my words, I felt refreshed to write about meaningful and complex events in my life that have shaped my character. I would say that my WP1 was the most vulnerable piece I have ever written as I dove into my struggles with grief and how I interpret the emotion. As I was writing, I felt like I was starting to understand myself a bit better as well.

In the middle of the semester, I was also able to express myself beyond a Google Document into the realm of film, which I was ecstatic about. I have always loved filmmaking, as it has been a way for me to convey emotion when words could not suffice. The video’s main idea revolved around a topic that is a pretty common point of discussion: transitioning to college. However, I believe that my shots taken from Los Angeles and Tokyo really helped individualize my personal experience.

I was also able to touch on my thoughts surrounding my childhood, my homes, as well as the loss of my dad shortly before college. To me, my WP2 is not just a school project but also a coming-of-age film dedicated to friends and family who remain near and dear to my heart despite entering a new phase in my life.

Through Writing 150, I learned that one of the reasons why personal writing is so special is because it gives us an opportunity to ponder deeply about events we may not think about on a regular basis, and then share our words with the world.

In verbal conversation with others, it is often difficult to convey innermost thoughts, only spur-in-the-moment frustrations or excitements. Typing out a personal piece over the course of weeks provided me a sense of comfort, as I could hide the fear and anxiety that cast shadows behind sentences that have never once left my mouth.

Although reflecting on trauma can be a bit intimidating, I have acknowledged that sharing one’s reflections can influence or move other people in positive ways. Observing the impact of my losses reminds me of everything that I have been through during the past couple of years, and I have empowered myself via my essays and video project.

I hope that I can keep talking about my experiences with loss, especially because writing about grief seems to be uncommon compared to a lot of other mental health-related issues. It would be even more enjoyable to gain traction on a site like Medium because then I would actually be able to bounce back and forth between people’s comments on my writing and have proper human-to-human conversations.

The juxtaposition of creating media through my losses is what I have been doing for a good chunk of my high school career, and I am very thankful that have gained the confidence to express myself through writing pieces in this class.

At the end of the day, I realized that I have a great desire to be someone who can speak authentically, acknowledging the peaks and troughs of my past. Perhaps continuing to write about what grief is to me will someday replace the curves of the alphabet with the soundwaves of my voice.