The Straightjacket
Danielle White
ENGL 1100.47

Fears sometimes control us. It becomes a straightjacket that keeps us from breaking out of the padded room that becomes our new comfort zone with the jacket on. The straight jacket of heights, for example, hinders the mobility out of the room to experience standing on the Eiffel Tower, gazing upon the vast city of New York, or taking in the view from a mountaintop into a flowering valley. My passion to write became my fear. In all of twenty minutes, the freedom of expressing in words was stripped, and the jacket took its place.

In elementary school, my mother stressed the interest in writing, not stories, but journals: "In twenty years, you can pull out your old journals and see all the differences in your life and in your writing skills." From then on, I wrote every night, capturing in words the events or feelings of the day. Page upon page, I spilled out my life. As I wrote everything, a passion to write developed more and more. Sixth grade language arts introduced us to poetry. The hidden meanings, the new way of expression, and the short, direct points intrigued me.

Not until seventh grade did I start experimenting with poetry. During math class, instead of listening to the teacher, I would write verses. There was not one particular style, but mostly four lines to a stanza with no rhyme scheme. The irony of spending my math time doing "language arts" work was that I hated and could not, and still cannot, stand English classes, even to this day. The reason for that is because all my English teachers had different standards in writing, and their standards were not ever what I could write up to. Year after year, I was writing for the teacher the year before. By the end of the year I would finally get some idea of what the teacher wanted, but then it was time to move on to a new teacher and a new writing style.

Despite my struggle with writing in English classes, I wanted to be a writer. Not any writer, but a journalist. My hopes were to write for a newspaper or magazine, which meant levels of success to build on. There would be some way to keep going up in the business, which, in my mind, meant success. To test my skills out, as an eighth grader, I joined our school’s yearbook committee. Surprisingly, all the writing was left up to the teacher while our duties were to take pictures. I do not remember why I did not take journalism my ninth grade year. It could have been because the class time conflicted with another class.

My first class of my high school career, however, was Creative Writing 1. The class was filled with seniors, and a few freshmen were sprinkled amongst the class. With so many "top dogs," I thought their work would be more skilled than mine. Being in this class was the ultimate freedom. At first the seniors were intimidating, but as the course went on they became inspirational. Everyone had a different topic to spice up each assignment. It opened up my eyes. Simple journal assignments turned out so vastly different in point of views, even though the entire class was given the same topic. There were 25 point of views I would have never thought about. Not only did I get 25 diverse views in the class, but I learned new ways to express myself.

In the class, each student wrote their own children’s book. That actually was my most difficult assignment in the class. Drawing was a big part of it, and I have no artistic skills. The drawings were not stick figures but they were not very detailed. The reason it was one of the more difficult assignments was because coming up with an idea for the story was challenging. My book ended up being about a child loosing her best friend. It was "sad" compared to the other books my classmates wrote. Another memorable assignment was called a doubled sided poem. It was about two characters telling a poem. It was one of the only pieces I wrote that genre was comedy. Even though this was a time I felt the utmost freedom, my writings were mostly about relationships or my father. The tone in most of those writings was generally of confusion, hurt, and anger. The class left a strong impression, and I had hoped it would help my writing and change my view of English classes as a whole.

The semester ended, and I had every intention of signing up for Creative Writing II for the following year. A normal day changed my writing future forever. January fifteenth was a Friday like any other for a fourteen-year-old and her friends: school, then the latest movie. None of us drove, so my mother was taking everyone home after the movie. After dropping everyone off, I noticed that she was mad. As soon as I stepped in the door, the ultimate freedom I had felt was stripped away in twenty minutes. In those twenty minutes, a straightjacket was put on, and I was thrown into the padded room. My mother was noticing changes in my personality and in my habits. Instead of asking me about why these changes were taking place, while I was laughing the night away at the movies, she had snooped through my journal and read the pages upon pages that laid out my life. The words she read caused her pain and anguish. The pages were filled with the pain and depression I dealt with daily and how men had become a part of my life due to my father’s absence.

Normally, after fighting with my mother, I would sit in my room and decorate in words the page with every feeling or thought. It was my way of not bottling up the anger. Some would say talking helps one through it; writing was what helped me get through it. Instead, I sat crying in the dark, beating myself up for being so naïve and idiotic to have had a journal, especially one that was visible to my mother. Sitting in that room all night was like being trapped in the dark padded room wanting to write, but the straight jacket was holding me back.

Writing was my hiding place, my tree fort that no one could find. When my mother read my journal, my fort had been discovered and torn down. From that moment on, the things inside were torn apart also. Previous journals that she had not read, I relocated to my locker at school for fear that she would find those and read them. It was not just about hiding the material of the tree fort. By her reading my life which was such a secret to everyone, it affected everything. School suffered the most because writing was so vital to education. When given any type of writing assignment including creative writing or research papers, my opinion and voice in the paper was vague and unexpressive. School was not the only area, however, of my life that was affected. Even talking to people, even my closest of friends, about how I felt or what was going on it my life, was difficult and became minimal.

This continued throughout my sophomore year and the first two months of my junior year at Carolina Forest High in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. In October of my junior year, my mother, my younger brother, and I moved to San Antonio, Texas. It was my chance to start over. Once the family moved there, the struggle of talking to people eased. Of course, I never let anyone there get too close, but after a year and a half, it was relieving to finally be able to express myself in front of peers once again outside of school.

Writing was still not an option. I dreaded picking up a pen or pencil to write. Finally, my senior year, I found a real teacher. When I say a "real" teacher, I mean a teacher that went against the curriculum to teach what was really important to our college career. Instead of spending days upon days studying Shakespeare or The Canterbury Tales, Mr. M skimmed through the stories just enough to expose the class to them. He did not mess around when it came to writing, though.

Mr. M wanted each student to leave his class feeling comfortable with writing. In the beginning of school, my writing was horrible because I had not absorbed anything that teachers tried to teach me for the previous two years because my passion or desire to learn about writing has ceased. I felt like it was not important to pay attention to what was being taught also because I was so uncomfortable writing during those two years. Mr. M did not do what my English teachers had done before. He gave an honest overview of the paper rather than his own view. I grew to respect this man. By the end of the year, I had finally learned some valuable skills. For example, I learned that the five paragraphs that we were taught is not what colleges are looking for.

Because of Mr. M’s class, I finally feel comfortable with writing again. I still do not think I am the strongest writer. At least now I am able to once again write a journal. The journals I write now are not as personal as they once were. The straightjacket still has somewhat of a grip on me. Never will I have the passion to ever become a professional writer, but my escape is slowly rebuilding.

Fears may become dictators of our lives. It becomes a straightjacket that does not allow us to move. For me, my straightjacket became writing. When my mom read my journal, she personally put that jacket on me. It took away my passion and ruined future hope of becoming a journalist, which might not have all been a bad thing because my dreams for the future have changed. If it was not for my twelfth grade teacher, I may not have ever been able to write again. My straightjacket is still partially on, but fears sometimes allow us to grow. And today, for that very reason, I feel comfortable writing such a personal story.