Anique Adman
Professor Cohl
FIQWS 10105 HA10
01 October 2018
Knock Me Down 9 Times, I Get Up 10!
When I was in 11th grade, I was at a very low point. Maybe not so low, but low enough to not feel like myself in the moment. It all began when I was visiting colleges and building up the anticipation of becoming a high school senior. But of course, life had other plans for me that I definitely wasn’t expecting at all. In the space of 4 months I had experienced 3 deaths and one of my best friends was shot. On October 16, I woke up to the news of Uncle Vern passing away due to his battle with cancer. Not even two full months later, December 8, I woke up to another call informing me that my longtime friend Kenny had passed away due to a horrific train incident. This one broke me the hardest because we grew up together along with a bunch of my other friends. I couldn’t even get out of bed that day, partially because crying so much gave me the worse headache ever. Have you ever seen the infamous Sparta kick from 300? I felt like I was just kicked in my head by a guy yelling “This is reality!!” instead of “This is Sparta!!” Healing from this pain was the only thing that was on my mind I wanted to pick myself up so much, but I kept getting knocked down. Two days into the 2017 year, my cousin passed away after suffering from a massive heart attack.
For so long I was numb, and I lost my drive. No I didn’t stop going to school but it felt as if I wasn’t even there. I was low, just low. Nothing made sense to me anymore, nothing seemed right, and I didn’t know if I had the power to fix anything. But something told me that I would eventually have to pick myself up. “Pick me up and use me.” Who said that you ask? None other than my wonderful pen. Yes, my pen. Anyone who knows me or get to know me knows that I love to write or even tell stories. My old English teacher, Ms. Johnson, would even call me “The Wordsmith” because I have a way with ways and I’m very articulate. But how would I look listening to a pen? That even sounds crazy in my head, imagine if I said it out loud to somebody that a pen told me to use them.
Still feeling numb and unmotivated, I tried to put myself into different activities so I wouldn’t think of what I was dealing with. Volleyball? Nope, sprained my ankle. Baking? Unless you’d like to use my burnt cookies as hockey pucks then nope. Crocheting? Yeah, that was an epic fail too. Even though, I did learn how to make baby booties, it still just wasn’t for me. I knew what I needed, but I avoided it. Sort of like when you’re sick but instead of taking the proper medication to make yourself feel better we’d rather sit there and suffer. Simply, I just went into my room closed the door and cried, until I was almost blue in the face. I looked over to my dresser and there was a pen, just sitting there. I took this as a sign from God, it was almost as if he said to me, “Pick the pen up and let’s grieve in a healthy way.” So I wrote. And wrote. And wrote some more. The more I wrote, the more I felt myself start to breathe again and start to feel a lot better. I used to like to write strictly for school purposes, but on this night I realized that writing is way more therapeutic for me than it may be for others. But I wasn’t always as good at writing as I thought I was. Sometimes it would just seem to be a bunch of words on the page, no particular structure or no real meaning to anything that I was writing. So I did something that most teenagers dread doing. I went to school on Saturday mornings from 9-12 instead of being home sleeping, yes I know I’m just as shocked as you are. At the time, I would question my decision every single morning while getting dressed because I just couldn’t believe I took that initiative. But in order to keep my head above water and not get sucked into my thoughts of losing my loved ones, I had to do everything necessary.
In these classes, I had to basically learn how to write all over again. How to properly structure a sentence, how to properly identify grammatical errors, even though I’m very reliant on spell check at times. It was like I was going through all the grades I went through again in order to make myself and my writing better. Though this did take away from my Saturday morning it gave me a new sense of life in a way. Even though I knew how to write, I was developing way better writing skills and enjoying it. When it came time to write my personal college essay, I had all the writing skills done pact but had no idea of what I was going to write. For a whole week straight I tried so many different topics but none of them just seemed right to me, they just seemed boring and not intriguing at all. So I went back into my mind from, two months prior and decided to take about the deaths that I experienced for the first time ever. Besides my mom and close friends, nobody knew how hurt I was or that I even experienced any of that. I cried many times while writing it because it felt like I was finally going through my proper grieving state. I felt like life had knocked me down 9 times, but I got up 10.(This a reference from a very good Cardi B song, check it out guys.) Writing is how I express myself, it makes me feel like I’m on top of the world. Once I get a pen and a piece of paper in my hands, there’s no telling what I’d write but I can guarantee you that you’d love it.
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