Diary Entry: Family and English

                 I come from a family where we don't express emotion. We don't talk about feelings. We just live, quietly, uneventfully. We don't face emotional crises. We don't face depression. We don't feel.

                  Except... we do. Of course we do. We're only human, after all. We can't possibly be as cold as stone. We just hide it better than others. We just pretend more believably.

                  I have never seen my father upset. I've seen him angry- mostly with me. I've seen him get irritated and frustrated with me, but I've never seen him blow his top, go into a fuming rage. I've never seen him lose control. He has always got his wits about him. He never lets emotions rule his mind and actions.

                  I've seen my mother cry, occasionally. I've seen her worry about me, worry about where I'm heading, worry about where I'll end up in life. I've seen her get upset, mostly about me. I've seen her get really angry, but never lose control.

                  My sister is still young. She's still a child. She's allowed to throw tantrums and fall into foul moods. She's allowed to display emotion; no-one thinks twice about it.

                  My family looks emotionless on the outside though. These irritations, frustrations, worries- we don't show them to the world. We don't let the rest world into our small little bubble. Our tiffs and troubles stay with us. No-one else is a part of it.

                  My parents, although they never outright discouraged me from being emotional, never encouraged it either. When I cried, they told me to stop being silly. When I felt left out of the family, I was told to not be ridiculous. I was always just told- never comforted. 

                    I've grown up feeling that displaying emotion was a weakness. I felt like I couldn't let others see how happy, or how sad, something made me. I f I showed someone how much words could hurt me, they would use it against me.

                    This didn't suit me. I needed to express my feelings. Trying to suppress them only made me feel bottled up, and on edge. I needed an outlet, a way to vent. I couldn't live my life without letting it all out somehow.

                     So I wrote. As I have discovered, some of my best pieces have been written when I was feeling extremely emotional. Writing about what I'm feeling at the moment comes naturally to me. Channeling that emotion into a different direction, however, is something that takes work.

                     I love writing. As I once explained to my best friend, I love the way words flow off my brain, I love the way my thoughts form words, words form sentences, sentences form stories. I love the way they twist and turn into perfectly fitting expressions. I love the way a single word can make or break a feeling, a single twist can change the meaning of an entire paragraph. I love watching how the same sentence can mean many different things, with the addition of a single word. I love watching my ideas take shape, watching my pen transform them into English.

                     This, this combination of family, and love for English, makes me write. This desire to write something good drives me to work at getting some of my skill back. Lack of practice, lack of use, has ruined my writing abilities. It's going to take a lot of work to go back to anything near what I used to be.

                      But I'll work at it. I want to. I want to be good. It was satisfying, especially as it was my only form of expression. It frustrates me nowadays, when I can't convey something exactly the way I want to. So I'll work at it, and I'll work hard. I will get back there, eventually. I will.