Week 3: “It’s so heavy, it’s so stressful”

Now there’s an annotated bibliography due on Tuesday. I like searching for academic articles and getting lost in what I find. I’m kind of excited but it’s 8:11PM Saturday and I still need to finish this post, the Scissors one and read some of the book due on Friday (and make dinner lol) so I can dedicate some time tomorrow to research. On Thursday I actually started and printed out some articles. I just haven’t taken them out of my backpack yet.

I decided to stick with my topic of that connected feeling (and maybe one day before I turn in the creative essay I’ll be able to word my topic better and not have to go through the whole story) because it’s so important to me. In my mini-research session on Thursday, I search for articles on mental health in the databases because that’s where one of my homes ended up being from that writing session I did last week but I didn’t end up with a lot of articles. I’m sure they’re out there (I hope so cuz it’s super important) but mental health isn’t my strong area. I don’t think it’s an area I want to write about. I’m completely open with my time in counseling as it’s been a majorly transformative experience in my life but I’d rather talk about it than write about it.

What I do want to write about is… you know something it’s so “funny” because I know what I’m going to write about next and it’s such a sore spot I can already feel my chest and face grow tight. So going along with the metaphorical home of being connected, I thought about being disconnected from my ethnic identity. This is an experience I’m not alone in but when you don’t talk about it, it sure feels like it. I’m already feeling like I’m going to cry which is amazing because I haven’t even gotten to the thick of it. Doing the blogging thing during Friday’s afternoon block really showed me this is what I should write about. I could connect all the things I wrote about last week into this too, because all connects together. On Friday, I was talking about my topic and then I talked about my life and after the convo I reflected on it because it felt good to share my life story with another person. But I also realized that when I’ve talked about my story, it feels like I’m telling it like it’s my past, rather than something I’m currently facing. Meaning: that when I talk about my childhood and growing up with my family, it feels like I’m so far removed from it on the inside. When seriously talking about my family is a super sore spot and I don’t talk about them very much. On the surface in conversation I can talk about the good and bad parts but when the convo is over, the feeling I’m left with is discomfort, heaviness and emptiness.

It’s like there’s a big hole missing in my family that would have connected us together: our Philippine identity. At least that’s what I hope! I can only speak for myself and in recognizing myself as a woman of color, as a shy student leader striving to lead with a social justice and feminist focus I can no longer push forth certain parts of my identity while hiding from my ethnicity because I feel disconnected from it. In having done that for years, I’ve shunned myself from being more open and learning from other people.

So this is why I have to write about this. It’s a personal project, it’s an important one. It’s one I hope I can find five sources for it by Tuesday night.

Bonus: here’s an excerpt from my journal, written Friday afternoon. After all the writing I did above, I hope it’s clear what IT is.

3:40PM It hurts me so much to talk about IT, I feel like I just need to let go and start crying. It’s like I’m holding so much in, it’s so heavy. It’s so stressful. I wish I want to get to a point where I’m comfortable in talking about IT, actually being in IT and not so much apart from it like how it feels. I do wish I were more connected I’m trying to find my way. I’m getting closer and closer every day to getting towards the feeling. And there’s no stopping point. That’s an important thing to remember. It’s getting me toward being authentic, I can’t deny how important it all is to me.