Be Careful

Be careful, little ears, what you hear.

Sometimes things are said. Mean things. Things that can derail us. Things that change us. Hurtful things that stay deep within our subconscious.  We can be totally unaware of these painful memories that have changed our lives until one day we are forced to confront them.
And today, that is what I did. I looked.

A few days ago, someone sent a little note complimenting me. To tell you the honest truth, I was stunned, and my eyes welled up with tears. I just don't think of myself as being really good at anything. But she appreciated my writing and said she hoped I would continue. Actually, I've received quite a bit of encouragement from friends and family, but this last note impacted me greatly. What is strange is that I have never kept a personal diary or journal before--except for one semester in college, when I was pressured to keep one for a philosophy class. I hated every minute of it. I didn't like writing my thoughts down on paper for my professor to see and critique. She, on the other hand, loved it and encouraged me to continue writing, which I did not.

You see, when I was only 14 years old and in high school, I, along with my fellow classmates, had to take an English class.  One day, our assignment was to write a short play. I loved my play, I thought it was funny. However, my English teacher wrote the word FARCE across the top of the page in bright red letters. It broke my heart. And it embarrassed me. After that, I was extremely careful with every single word I put down on paper.

What interests me now is that, while in college and after writing many, many papers, I developed a love for writing. But still, I did not write unless I absolutely had to. And because I felt there was such a lack in my writing ability, I ended up taking an excessive number of English classes, of all types. I was told repeatedly by my university counselors to pick a major! I did—I picked Psychology and also Sociology, along with several minors, English being one of them. I wanted to make sure that whatever I wrote was grammatically correct. I became obsessed with sentence structure. You wouldn't know it now. I write what I feel. Sometimes a feeling or emotion can't be captured in sentence structure, sometimes it has to be written down the way it was felt. Bit by bit.

I'm much older now, and I've lost many of my inhibitions. I enjoy writing — I don't care if I'm not that great at it; I still love it.  I like digging deep inside myself and finding out who I am. I like remembering the good and the bad that made me what I am. I like peering into my subconscious and saying helloooooo.  And then I say hello back, and I'm happy to get to know them.

Shame on that teacher, all those many years ago.  The what-ifs do play through my mind sometimes, but then I think, who cares? I'm writing now, aren't I?