bangletyger

[bangletyger]

Reflecting on Hate

I have had time to reflect. As a teacher we are told all the time to reflect upon everything we do. It’s quite boring sometimes, and it becomes repetitive. You would think that by now I have mastered the art of reflection. You would be wrong. I hate reflecting. However, as I said, I have had time to reflect. Upon what you ask? Myself. I look back to our very first workshop on January 15th. We used the Sondra Perl guidelines. I don’t know if I exactly followed the guidelines that were put in front of me, but I sure did write for the entire time. I think I was having a bad day, or I guess by then it would have been only the morning still. We started with distractions. “Distractions I can think of is my jewelry being in the way. My bracelet is too chunky, and now that I took that one off I need to take the other off. Now my thumb rings, all 3.” I keep going on about my jewelry and how it's bothering me and complaining about it. My charm bracelet is completely full of charms, and I have another with only one charm on it so I can’t complain about that one too much. I wore two rings on my left thumb and only one on my right. Everything was in the way. Then I mentioned something about how behind my ear hurt and I wasn’t sure why, but I speculated that it was because of my adventurous weekend. Reflecting back on that weekend it was terrible! I lost a very expensive ring, a bracelet I was given 7 years ago by my ex-ex-boyfriend and the vape I had just bought the week prior. Tragic. Then to top it all off I put myself into a very awkward situation. Writing about it now I cringe inside and I feel myself making a disgusted face. I hate thinking about it. I can taste the air of my memories that weekend, and I can feel goosebumps on my skin from being cold, or maybe due to embarrassment. It makes my stomach feel sick. I say really stupid things sometimes. All I can feel in my head is shame. How do I feel shame in my head? Physically feel shame? I don’t know, but I do. 

Going back to my distractions, I say that my phone will probably distract me. I was waiting for a text back from someone I really wanted to talk to. I thought that maybe their message might make me feel better. Reflecting back I remember that just a week before, or maybe a little longer than that, we had gotten into an… argument? I don’t think I would say it was an argument, more of an awkward but necessary conversation. Why must everything feel so awkward or embarrassing to me? I hate that feeling too. While rereading my first workshop I go on to say some stupid poetic sentence that really just doesn’t sound good at all. I find though, that when I write while feeling strong emotions I tend to write very well. I can tell you now that I was feeling very strong emotions. Perhaps upon further reflection, I might not write as well when I'm feeling so worked up. I can remember the despair I felt in my chest while writing. The fog I felt looming in my brain. I say despair but I don’t know if I can put a real word onto how I was feeling. Just imagine you feel kind of like you’re carved from stone. Your skin is cold and you feel an empty fullness in you. Let me explain: Well… things made of stone are full of stone; hard, cold, meaningless stone. You feel full in a sense that that is all you're made of. Meaningless stone that makes you feel empty. Whatever, I'm made of rocks I guess. 

In my workshop I began thinking about my mystery person and the text I impatiently awaited. I wished that they would be innocent, sweet, gentle…thoughtful. A bunch of very nice adjectives. Then I reminisce… or maybe reflect upon an old relationship I had before. A very loving friendship. Best friends as one would put it. I loved this friend like they were my family, because I felt like they were. I grew up with them. I learned a lesson from that friendship: It does not matter how deeply, intensely, or devotedly you appreciate your friendship with them, or the person themself. They need to do the same to you. I learned that you can’t force your friends to be as much of a friend to you as you are to them. I had to think about how to word that because it confused me when I said it in my head. I stopped being their friend because I didn’t want to waste my energy on someone who would not do the same. So then I made a new friend. This friend was even worse! I tried to ignore the signs I think. One may say that I ignored the red flags. I had never felt like I was in such a one-sided relationship in my life. Except I thought well… maybe I’m just a bad friend? I know now that I was a better friend to them than they would have ever been to me. Good reflection, hey? 

Back to the old workshop prompts. We started to talk about longing. I said I long for love. Love looks different to all people I think. I described this “love” as feeling genuine, soft, and gentle but intentional. Now, I'm not particularly referring to a partner, I’m just referring to relationships in general. With my mom, my friends, a partner maybe. There is love that we feel for everyone I think. When I reflect upon what I have written during this chunk of the workshop I think about RuPaul. RuPaul says that “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell can you love anybody else?!” I giggle thinking about someone reading that in my essay but I say it for a reason. It’s really true! If I don’t love myself first, how could I show someone love properly, intentionally, and wholly? 

I wanted to try and reflect during my writing of this old workshop on how negative I can be. I would like to try and see the good in more things. During this part of the workshop the prompt was pieces and associations. I go to say “I associate all I've written with love. A desire of something. An adoration, a wanting, a seeing, a feeling. The fire burns bright but it’s all so painful aglow. Hate. A wind that follows so gently, making the loose strands twitch. It’s whispers linger on me and in me. How I hate hate, but is it necessary?” I think that maybe hate is necessary sometimes. Hate is a strong emotion, and a negative one too. When I reflect on hate I wonder why do we hate? Is it personal experiences? Maybe societal influence? A reaction of fear, anger, or trauma? Perhaps I should think about my hate more… reflect upon it. 

 Thinking of where I was when I was writing this workshop, in the very spot I am sitting in now. 1437, ENG 2354 from 10:30am to 11:50 am. Second row of desks as soon as you walk in, 5 desks back. This is my spot. I wonder if my spot was making me feel hateful? Well, during this part of the workshop we start to ask ourselves what is the whole topic, what is the heart of your story? Now I find this ironic, and maybe then I did too. The heart of my writing, the whole topic, was my heart. The heart “it might be a conglomeration of who I am now, to who I was then. Well, do I even know? It might be a feeling of loneliness. A feeling of being small. It might be sad memories overshadowing the good ones. It might be a sense of not knowing. A desire to know. I wonder who does. How do they know? The heart of my topic is my heart. My metaphoric middle. It’s squished. It’s got a hole in it. There’s too much of it.” I think of a memory that should be good, but it turns into a bad one. It makes my middle hurt, it aches maybe. By this point I can tell I'm getting more into this negative emotion I was feeling. The hate. It has transferred from a sad and longing hate to maybe disdain and anger. I felt very angry, I think. Then I got tired. “What is the point of your story she asks” is when I began to slow down. “My point was that I miss a time where this problem and those and these… weren't real. But there’s others from then too? Yeah. When does it end, right? Ha! If only we knew. If we could know well, what would I do? My point is this: I desire things that may be out of my reach whether they are too far in front of me, and I need my running shoes. Or, it's so far back waaaay behind me they may need theirs. That’s something I need to learn to gauge. There’s no compass, not a map… a doppler maybe? It’s all around, I don’t know. Maybe it’s under me. Regardless, I'm a fool and I need to stop. This feels complete. I said what I wanted. Now I'm tired.”

 I wrote this essay, personal essay 2, all at once during a worksop. I don’t remember which workshop it was or what we were doing, I wasn’t following along anymore. I started reading my past workshops and I was reflecting upon what I might have been thinking. I was in a weird mood, so I began writing about my very first workshop. I didn’t touch this essay for two weeks after I spewed my thoughts onto the page. Today we did a workshop where I had my peers read my essay and give me feedback. So now I'm back spewing my thoughts onto the page once again. Rereading what I had originally written made me wonder what I do differently now at the end of the term compared to how I did things at the beginning of the term. My distractions have changed a bit. I stopped wearing rings on my right thumb so I don’t have to worry about taking it off to write. When I go to work on a project whether it's being handwritten or typed I take my charm bracelets on my right side off before I even begin. I learned from my mistakes, or I guess my distractions. I think about the place I was in mentally when I wrote my first workshop. I was exhausted from my practicum, I was exhausted from working retail at Christmas time, I was just outright tired. Nervous for the semester to begin again at a time that felt all too soon. Full of hate. Here I am though. It’s the last essay for this class, second last assignment to complete. I made it! I wanted to set a goal for myself to see the better in things and I’m really going to try to do that. Stop feeling the hate. So now that I have reflected upon my reflection…during a workshop…where I wrote my reflection on a workshop while in a workshop… anyways. Now that I think my essay is finished. Do I think I'm better at reflecting? No I don’t. I'm supposed to be positive but no point in being positive if you’re lying. However, I realized I'm not bad at reflecting, in my opinion anyways, and I can enjoy doing it but just not when I'm forced to. I guess maybe I hate reflecting. Perhaps I should start reflecting for fun. Anyways, I don't feel full of hate anymore and I guess that’s my reflection upon this all. Are hate and reflection even real words anymore?