Assignment: Think of a place that evokes strong feelings for you (either positive or negative). Using descriptive language, try to write about that place in a way that conveys those feelings, but don't ever come right out and say what the feelings are. .
Sitting around my parent's kitchen table is somewhat routine in our family. I am the oldest child of nine. Their home is so inviting and warm. Usually filled with laughter and delight; however, it brings about different emotions for me. When I think about my parent's home and about it filled with people it brings me to a dark place. I see things differently than they do. Maybe it is because my "life experiences " were not what the rest of the family had. For me the room is filled with people, and yet I feel alone. There is so much talking, and yet I have nothing to say. There is laughing and merriment, and yet I can't hear it.
For most of my life, I was a fugitive from my feelings. From a very young age, I felt overwhelmed by pain. As a pre-teen, I ate my feelings. As a teen, I starved them away. In college, I drank and smoked them numb. And in my twenties, I felt and cried my eyes red and raw. I sobbed. I wailed. I shook and convulsed. And I wished I'd never chosen to feel them, but rather kept pushing them down, pretending everything was fine. Except when I did that, they didn't just go away "they compounded on top each other and built up until eventually I exploded, with no idea why I felt so bad. .
One time when I was 17, I couldn't open a jar of jelly. After ten minutes of twisting, banging, and fighting, I finally threw it at a wall and broke down. You may think that was a sure sign I had emotional problems, and assume there was some pill to help anesthetize that sadness. That's what a lot of people thought. But the reality was a lot simpler: I simply never dealt with my feelings from events large and small, and eventually they dealt with me.
