Week 2: I Found Home

This week we did a couple of writing exercises on our creative essay, expanding on our thoughts of what HOME means to us. I’m very uncommitted in choosing a topic for my paper and this one was no different. I’m the type of student that writes a paper the night before a draft is due and it ends up pretty great. I’m the type of writer that writes a thing and ends up hating it completely when it’s done. But that isn’t going to work with this essay. Especially with this being about something personal and I always want to get personal, it’s going to be that much harder. Of course I’d choose something difficult to write about. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t push myself all the way into the personals and write about something so charged. But it was the only thing I was interested in. I am going to write about the body – some aspect of it, probably not the body as a whole. I thought about the eyes, which was what my Tuesday night free-write was all about. Then I thought about hair for a split second. I don’t know if it makes sense or will fit into the guidelines of the paper. Here is an excerpt from that Tuesday night free-write, taken directly from my journal, written after I thought about using eyes as a topic:

I thought about the eyes and my mind flashbacked to all the moments where I disconnected AND looked in the mirror at myself and all the things I thought I saw. And I immediately looked up from my computer, put my face in my hands and started fucking crying. But that’s so new, that’s so something I don’t even know what kind of research I can put in with that. But it’s a something and it’s a something I would like to explore. It resides in the body. It represents so much. It’s an opening. That fucking hurts me and it takes so much out of me.

The next day in class I shared this idea with a small group and even in explaining this topic more fully I felt so uncomfortable. I went back to a low period last year (my first year at Evergreen) where I felt absolutely sad and empty for a considerable stretch of time and talked about a selfie I took of myself where there was “nothing” behind my eyes. But that doesn’t represent HOME. It represents being away from home, LOST and disconnected. So if there was a continuation of the story then, how did I find my way back…I guess…I started getting better when I went back to therapy, when I prioritized self care. In that way, in remembering all those meetings and all those times spent by myself trying to be there for myself, the feelings from that were uncomfortable, I felt cared for because I wasn’t going through that stuff alone, I felt more connected to myself emotionally. In therapy we focused on healing parts of my past and I couldn’t help but be that kid again – all sad and alone, unsupported and misunderstood. Four things I felt during those empty periods last year.

So from all THAT home is that feeling of being connected – a feeling I always felt in my three years of counseling/therapy. A feeling I never felt anywhere else because I was the priority, the focal point, the main reason I was there. It was all about me in there and I don’t get that anywhere else.

And this, and this, AND THIS fits that first guideline of choosing a metaphorical feeling of home. The next part is to connect it to APIA pop culture. IDK, this is still an underdeveloped thought. I just don’t know how I’m going to nail down a topic at this point. Do I go for something personal like this? My HOME is that feeling of connection, of grounded, centered and self aware. The closest I am to myself, the more connected I am, the more “at home” I am. There’s that and I like it because I’m the only one in that “home” which I can connect that to all the times before when my “home” was violated/forced into/taken from me/claimed for me. I like it because I’m the only one in that “home” and it speaks to how I believe I am the only one that can allow myself that connected feeling. No one is going to give it to me. No one is going to take it from me.

After taking a break and then thinking about it more, I think this is what I’m going to stick with. The feeling fits with my idea of HOME and it’s applied to so many parts of my life and then I can also fit it with APIA pop culture. It’s all out there The research part is up next. Except… you know, if I change my mind again. LOL.

Here is a line straight from my project proposal that explains why I was so drawn to the EYES idea: When I was freewriting on Monday night, I thought about the eyes because there have been times in my past where I caught myself staring out the window or at the wall as a way to disengage from an uncomfortable situation or whenever I just wanted to tune out of reality for a minute. I can relate that to feeling lost from home, away from my heart, running away from reality. But then with that, reality or my heart or my total body would be what my “home” is and my eyes would be like the front door I’m running out of.

This is the selfie I took of myself back in that empty period last year. I really like this picture because it shows me how lost and disconnected I was from myself and the people around me who tried to help me. I can recognize these eyes in the mirror now and it tells me I’m not okay, cautions me to not fall into this again.