June 2, 2014
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Virginia Woolf, English Modernist writer is best known for her feminist essay, A Room of One’s Own and the novel Mrs. Dalloway committed suicide at age 59. She stated, “ Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.” As a child reading and writing was very difficult. I was a sickly child, with long skinny limbs, pasty white skin, and a big head full of thick black curls. I suffered from asthma from the day I was born from my mother’s account. Most of my early childhood was spent in hospitals surrounded by nuns, breathing machines, and the sterile environment of the hospital. As I grew into a school age child, I was withdrawn and extremely shy with an active imagination. My mother saw my view of the world through rose-colored glasses, a phrase family often used. I would stare out into space daydreaming for hours. One of my fondest activities was listening to my sister Maria, read to me from the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and Ramona the Pest with her honey suckle voice. She sat there with me on the ground Indian style her long straight dark brown hair elegantly shaping her long pale neck. With Her back as straight as a board, she read aloud. Oh, how I looked forward to the day I could read like her and someday write, too. Writing to me is a communication of thought and a composition of my soul where I share with others intimate emotions wisdom and private thoughts.
When it comes to writing, though writing makes me feel more open to others it was not always this way. I have this ever present shame and fear within my being. It causes my heart to pound within my heavy chest. My ears begin to echo with the shrill voices of small children calling me ‘retard’. I start to shake within my soul, as thoughts of guilt, anxiety, and shame run through my mind. Emotions and feelings created of not belonging and being stupid. I am most...