(no subject)
please give me feedback. i was trying to write an essay for english and possibly a college application essay, but i'm not sure if it really says anything to anyone besides me, or people who don't know me super well. what could i add to make it more application essay-ish, if at all possible?
My life is changing and it is the exact same feeling. It pulls at my gut. My voice isn’t steady. My eyes burn and I’m dizzy.
It was eleven years ago exactly and as the summer sun continued to scorch September days, I was off to first grade. I had lived with my two younger sisters, mother, and father in the same house for my entire life. There was comfort and security there. It was constant and dependable and supportive. I had everything I needed. And along came the day when I was forced to leave it all, pushed out into the sterile, unfeeling world of Miss Wilson’s first grade classroom. It was all alphabets and pencil-sharpeners and raised hands and it terrified me. I remember vividly the dread I would feel each day upon waking, knowing that within an hour or two I would be plied from my mother and sat down in a cold, hard desk to be taught cursive and addition. It was so new and different. It was change and it was painful. Everyday it was like drowning as I sobbed and clutched at my mother’s neck, as I begged her to stay between gasps of air. I felt as if I would never return to the calming sanctuary that my home and family afforded me. It was as if I could not function without their presence, as if no one but my parents could truly understand me. My parents had to take me to school each day and sit with me in class until I stopped crying. My mom and my sisters would come and visit me at recess. I needed reminders that I wasn’t being abandoned. However, time passed without my notice, as it always does, and eventually this tremendous change wasn’t change anymore; it was just first grade and it was my life. I adjusted. I made new friends and learned new things. I no longer needed the constant guidance of my parents. But I can still feel that aching sensation, that feeling of utter loss and hopelessness, whenever I think about what I had to go through those first few weeks of school.
Today I feel that exact same feeling. My eyes sting when I blink with the salt that has built up from my tears. I feel empty and full simultaneously. But I do not conjure up images of my mother as she leaves the classroom. I am thinking about Kevin Yoakum. In a sense, for the past year, he has been my family. He cared for me in a way that even my parents cannot. I was reassured just by his touch. But change comes. It is always coming. Sometimes we see it and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes it hits us; we’ve let our backs face the ocean and suddenly we’re tumbling, enveloped by the unexpected. This is what I believe. I believe in the unyielding power of change. It is the only constant in life yet it can still catch us by surprise. And when it hurts, when the days are long but the nights are longer, when your body aches from crying, when you feel alone and without hope, know that this too shall change; this too shall pass.
My life is changing and it is the exact same feeling. It pulls at my gut. My voice isn’t steady. My eyes burn and I’m dizzy.
It was eleven years ago exactly and as the summer sun continued to scorch September days, I was off to first grade. I had lived with my two younger sisters, mother, and father in the same house for my entire life. There was comfort and security there. It was constant and dependable and supportive. I had everything I needed. And along came the day when I was forced to leave it all, pushed out into the sterile, unfeeling world of Miss Wilson’s first grade classroom. It was all alphabets and pencil-sharpeners and raised hands and it terrified me. I remember vividly the dread I would feel each day upon waking, knowing that within an hour or two I would be plied from my mother and sat down in a cold, hard desk to be taught cursive and addition. It was so new and different. It was change and it was painful. Everyday it was like drowning as I sobbed and clutched at my mother’s neck, as I begged her to stay between gasps of air. I felt as if I would never return to the calming sanctuary that my home and family afforded me. It was as if I could not function without their presence, as if no one but my parents could truly understand me. My parents had to take me to school each day and sit with me in class until I stopped crying. My mom and my sisters would come and visit me at recess. I needed reminders that I wasn’t being abandoned. However, time passed without my notice, as it always does, and eventually this tremendous change wasn’t change anymore; it was just first grade and it was my life. I adjusted. I made new friends and learned new things. I no longer needed the constant guidance of my parents. But I can still feel that aching sensation, that feeling of utter loss and hopelessness, whenever I think about what I had to go through those first few weeks of school.
Today I feel that exact same feeling. My eyes sting when I blink with the salt that has built up from my tears. I feel empty and full simultaneously. But I do not conjure up images of my mother as she leaves the classroom. I am thinking about Kevin Yoakum. In a sense, for the past year, he has been my family. He cared for me in a way that even my parents cannot. I was reassured just by his touch. But change comes. It is always coming. Sometimes we see it and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes it hits us; we’ve let our backs face the ocean and suddenly we’re tumbling, enveloped by the unexpected. This is what I believe. I believe in the unyielding power of change. It is the only constant in life yet it can still catch us by surprise. And when it hurts, when the days are long but the nights are longer, when your body aches from crying, when you feel alone and without hope, know that this too shall change; this too shall pass.