My once stagnant legs began to buckle and quiver, descending my knees towards the coarse particleboard of the barn floor. I felt helpless and cognitively muddled. If it were possible, to have someone of a third party vividly paint a mural of my being and emotional experience in the rain the night before, and replicate the same style of brush stroke depicting my dejected state in the barn the following morning, not only would the vibrancy and swirls of the watercolor differ, one would not believe that they were viewing the same man within a twelve hour interval of time. I hoped to understand my current situation of regretful truth, where I’d realized my emotional instability, by trying to rationalize my transitions, or how I’d shifted throughout my time in the quaint, little village I called home. I transitioned with ease, without recoil, from an apathetic recluse, to a triumphant conqueror of emotional restriction, to a melancholic man who thinks himself into psychological catastrophe all within a twenty-four hour time frame. In the open field the night before, I believed myself to be rid of emotional baggage, such as the type I was displaying on the barn floor that day. Perhaps my strain and grief were not meant to subside just yet; perhaps I needed to understand in its entirety why my mind naturally steers itself down this path of anguish so that I could understand others in order to be of aid. It didn’t make any sense to me. How could a human being experience such a slew
In the fourth chapter of Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak entitled All the Way Down, Palmer is addressing and discussing clinical depression and the discoveries he made during this time. Disconnection and mystery are both explicitly covered to accurately explain the run and feeling of depression for the individuals that have never experienced the disorder. One of the main ideas that is addressed is that one of the only ways to get out of depression is to use knowledge of the heart and the choices that lead to wholeness are expressive of personal truth rather than calculated and intended to achieve a goal.
“When he brought home his horns and hides my mother said.” Not being able to express myself and unable to be myself. “Without a vision he had migrated to the city and went to work in the packing house.” Him without realizing he had moved and having to now hide, without knowing the changes he is now having to conserve himself. Myself that i have and now having to exclude myself from everything. ‘I remember the silence of his power, the red buffalo painted on his chest.” The relations are expressed like him remembering the old days and missing the ways used to be, changed and wanting to go back to his old self. I can relate because of realizing how i used to be with myself and the people around
Looming over me was a man in a blue pinstripe suit holding a leather briefcase. His wrinkled forehead displayed beads of sweat and stress was painted on his face. “Rise and Shine, Anastasia.” He said with a certain accentuated low-key moroseness to his tone, placing unusual stress on syllables and stressing the wrong parts of words. “Wake up, Anastasia” He continued, “Wake up and smell the ashes of your people.” I glowing blue eyes staring at me, observing every detail of my being. I called for my Mum and Dad, but they were gone. The world looked different that day. My colourful childhood home had changed to a bleaker and less welcoming brown, there were many planes in the sky, like birds flying south and there were bones and pieces of metal all over the ground. That was when I was deported to The Society. To my new
In the short story “The Harvest” by Amy Hempel, an unnamed narrator is in a horrible car accident, where her leg is permanently disfigured. The story takes place after the accident, when the narrator is attempting to process the life changing event that’s just happened to her. The story is broken up into two parts,in the first part she describes the accident and the aftermath - the accident, the hospital, the recovery. But she opens the second half of the story by admitting that not everything we just read is factual. The struggle she is having throughout the story is to cope with and understand her accident, but her emotional distress inhibits that. The narrator conveys her instability and vulnerability that the accident caused in through the ways she decides to alter the details of her story. Although she goes through the process of reflecting on why she does this, she doesn’t come out the other side feeling less confused about why her accident happened to her, or any less unstable and vulnerable.
As human beings we let love and loss affect us in our daily lives, we are prone to let these two affect our emotions. One author who takes us into the story of her life, Jo Ann Beard , wrote “ The fourth state of matter” which describes her unique way of thinking when she is exposed to difficult situations in her life. Beard begins to build her incidents by expressing every little detail and using her emotional appeals. Throughout the essay, Beard uses figurative language and a tone of ambivalence to thread the concerns in her life and appeal to the reader's emotions.
The way she uses description in this essay and the flow of events is very similar to the way that memories rush in when one returns to a familiar place from one’s past. To someone that may not of experienced this phenomena the details described may seem to be disconnected and random.
He turned to the streets, begging for scraps of food or clothing, trying to find some way to support himself. Those years of his life had seemed like a dark abyss in which he was trapped. He could see the sunlight above, but he had no way to reach it. He still remembered the looks of disgust and fear upon people’s faces as he crawled to them and begged for help. They would pull their children closer and cross the street as they neared him, or walk straight past him with their eyes fixed ahead, unfazed by his pleas. After some time, he lost hope. As the rich merchants and fine clothed women passed, he said nothing, curled up in a ball on filthy, tattered blankets, starved and cold, flea bitten and depressed. He had feared for a time that he was on the brink of insanity, and had taken to talking to the stones on the street to while away the lonely hours. He remembered hoping he would simply pass in his sleep during the night to escape his never-ending
In the beginning of the narrative, Sarah demonstrates characteristics of bewilderment. Sarah, a 16-year-old high-school dropout, is rethinking her life as she says, “Maybe my whole life I’ve been living inside of an imaginary painting” (King 54). Sarah is confused and feels that her childhood was a lie. The readers realize along with her that her parents put on an act to protect her from the fact that they do not get along. This communicates the sense of feeling trapped within lies thought to be true and addresses the message to society that the root of the problem is always bigger than what is expected. Similarly, Sarah asserts her latest assessment regarding herself and her mental state saying, “I am not going crazy. I do not need a psychologist. I decide I am an artist inside of a tornado that will not let me go” (King 128). Sarah decides she is in a mental state where she cannot portray her feelings. She uses this excuse of being stuck in a tornado to reject the fact that ultimately she will need to get her life back on track and accept who she is. This is another one of Sarah’s shenanigans to try to be original, and by doing this, she finds a reason to avert from being a “normal” person. People today encounter the same situation in everyday life by using excuses to get around inevitable things. Sarah’s manifestation of change continues in the middle of the story as well.
As John sat in the bustling coffee shop and gazed at the blank paper in front of him, beads of sweat broke across his forehead and trickled slowly down his face. How was he meant to write down what he was feeling when he couldn’t explain it? He knew his emotions were in there somewhere but he just couldn’t reach them. They were locked tight, stuffed somewhere deep down. He was comfortably numb and that was something that terrified him. It was as if the numbness was pulling him into a black hole. He was trapped, unable to get out. His thoughts were jumbled and out of sync. He couldn’t tell if what he was feeling was real. Was he capable of feeling emotions anymore? It was as if John was a ghost. Doing what he had to do
"Different emotions battled for dominance in his mind and heart. Confusion. Curiosity. Panic. Fear. But laced through it all was the dark feeling of utter hopelessness." (6)
A shift is made in the spectrum of the audience now that the author has made her position clear. Williams, instead of referring to herself, now addresses a collective audience including herself as her old phrases change from, "I will leave to mental," "while it seems to me," and "when I read about storm" to "we want our boxes," "what we are really seeking" and "our anxiety in response." Williams establishes a connection with the reader now more than ever as she refers to human emotions and common experiences. Humanizing her the arguments more, Williams effectively earns the readers' appeal to sympathy.
Is this the narrator's attempt to understand the self or soul? To regain an essence of power and understanding of who she is becoming or has become? Is there a larger question here which the reader, through the narrator, must ask? Does not the narrator's disintegration or depression become but a symbol of her search for self? There is a belief, one I personally share, that depression is part of the soul's cycles--a place or time where opposing forces struggle with reason.
In the beginning of the novel Sarah demonstrates characteristics of bewilderment. Sarah, a 16 year old high-school dropout, is rethinking her life as she says, “Maybe my whole life I’ve been living inside of an imaginary painting” (King, 54). Sarah is confused and feels that her childhood was a lie. The readers realize along with her that her parents put on an act to protect her from the fact that they hate each other. This communicates the sense of feeling trapped within lies thought to be true, and addresses the message, the root of the problem is always bigger than what is expected. Similarly, Sarah, the protagonist, asserts her latest assessment regarding herself and her mental state. She says, “I am not going crazy. I do not need a psychologist. I decide I am an artist inside of a tornado that will not let me go” (King, 128). Sarah decides she is in a mental state where she cannot portray her feelings. She uses this excuse of being stuck in a tornado to reject the fact that eventually she will need to get her life back on track and accept who she is. This is another one of Sarah’s shenanigans to try to be original, and by doing this she finding a reason to avert from being a “normal” person. People today encounter the same situation in everyday life by using excuses to get around inevitable things. Sarah’s manifestation of change continues in the middle of the story.
Today was funeral day. My mom’s funeral. It was a dark October thursday, the clouds were brewing a storm. A slight breeze disturbed my neck. My uncomfortable suit sleeves bellowed in the cold breeze.. I hadn’t felt any emotions since the day of her death, which was weeks ago, almost as if my emotion is grey. It was warm then, as my mind was too. Nowadays, up until today, my mind has been a dark fog, as if my mind was released into the sky, darkening everyone’s day, arriving at my mom’s funeral or just to cuddle up with their friends and family in front of a warm crackling fire, telling the stories of their childhood and how times were better. Not me, my dad usually ignored me and he only worked on managing my mom’s fortune. Yeah. My mom’s
It took me more than two months to heal mentally. The same moment replayed in my mind, as if the pause button was broken, imagining all the possibilities of it reoccurring. It took me a while as I dreaded each practice and concocted any excuses to skip and avoid my fears. Similar to an idea Wendelin Van Draanen demonstrates in the book titled “Flipped” through the main character, Jessica. Through Jessica’s obstacles, Van Draanen conveys the amount of influence the mind has over your body when they dread complete a task and how excuses pile up to avoid doing so. Through these negative days, you have to continually push themselves to accomplish a goal, despite whether they want to that certain day or not. Nevertheless, I was compelled by my