Her behavior was one of the things that set her apart from her peers. Not that she was mean or anything; she just happened to have different interests that were uncommon between her classmates. Her sense of humor didn’t quite meet the expectations of other eight-year-old children. Well, something was said to her and it affected her emotions slightly. She immediately started crying, and that’s what made her hold the nickname “crybaby” for years.
She didn’t really care about about session; she wasn’t integrating the small booklets with designs of Barbie dresses. She was a bit of a tomboy, and maybe that’s because she had to sit in a desk with two boys for four years. But the one thing this girl was good at was writing. Every Monday, she’d get together in a group of students and go to fan areas around the school and sit somewhere and write a poem. Sometimes you’d see her by the seaside, sitting on a rock, appreciating the reflection of the sun in the sea and watching the birds fly by. Other times, she’d sit in a field with different colored flowers that would make her think of the colors of the rainbow as she starts writing about how much she loved the gathering of all the colors together in star.
The fact that this girl is often lonely, she doesn’t have any friends, and deep inside she felt broken. She’s still got a way to look at the bright and positive sides of the world. She didn’t understand that bit by bit, writing was helping her communication and understanding of others get better. And today, eight-year-old who is now 16 cents account of a big audience talking about who she wants used to be.
“When I was 8, I started writing poetry, and I still survived constantly today. I didn’t know back then that writing poems was helping me look at the positive sides of the world. I didn’t know that the birds that I watch like the seaside became my friends. The colors of the rainbow, which I often talked about in my poems and are so different from each other, I still say side by side were making me feel less indifferent. Bit by bit, my writing was helping me get better. And lately, as my writing skills progressed, I started to understand that I was brewing all the feelings I was hiding inside on the paper. I was showing my self-esteem oceans and these feelings, and I was embracing that. I became stronger because I could finally see them on the paper, and that’s what made me feel better about who I am. That’s what made me understand I communicate with others better. And other day, I had many great friends.
My point is if writing helped me, then it can surely help someone else who is facing the same problems or even worse. World Health Organization statistics show that there are 264 million people suffering from depression and there are 284 million others suffering from anxiety disorders. However, this data only shows the people who have gone to an institution to check themselves. So what about the people who, for heaven, how many are there that can’t get any help? How can these people help themselves? First off, writing makes us more aware. Writing helps us get to know ourselves better. It has settled to me many times that I would write something and look back at it and wonder aloud, ‘So that was what’s really bothering me?’ In a sense, the pen that we hold communicates our unconsciousness and awakens it. It helps us keep track of our worries, thoughts, and helps us be more organized. And that’s where my second point becomes relevant: writing helps our thoughts be more organized. Sometimes when we are told to talk, we get this hour all our emotions get rolled up in our head and we can’t keep track of what was said and what balsan we feel that lump in our throat which is usually our emotional strings trying to find their way through our vocal cords. However, we can take this slump in our throat, bring it down, and thread the pen in our hands to do a job for us. We can write how we feel. We can write these emotions out and untangle these emotional strings. And that’s how that makes us be more organized. That’s how it helps us see how we really feel on a piece of paper.
Third, writing shifts one’s viewpoints. This is, I mentioned before, writing was what helped me view the other side of the world. It helped me view the optimistic sides that I was missing from my life. Everyone is able to do that. This doesn’t mean that we are deviating from reality; it simply means that we are finally seeing another side of it.
I wanted to share this with all of you today because mental health is a big problem in our country and probably many other countries. In Albania, mental health, such as depression and anxiety, is seen as the same disease such as schizophrenia or impulse control disorder. I learned about this when I heard my grandmother in a story about a girl who suffered from depression. This girl was just a little bit older than me. She had to be put at number five, which is the clinic where the people with the most severe impulse control disorders have to go. And she had to be there just because she had depression. Although I try to fight to fight the fact that this mental diseases can be treated the same, I became more and more aware of the fact that our country simply doesn’t understand the separation between all of them. I wanted to also talk about one of the first times that I encountered suicide. I was in sixth grade. She was a person who was only five years older in the knee. She had a great social group, she had a great best friend, and she had a great boyfriend who she loved and lobster. I used to be on the same school bus with her, so I got to talk to her very often. She was always laughing, she was always very smiley, and actually the last day of her life, she was laughing and very smiley as well. When I got to school the next day, I saw teachers gathered together in a group, whispering to each other. That got me curious because I had no idea what was happening. I went to class and saw my friend Skylar in a similar group. I asked them what happened, and there they told me that she jumped off the eighth floor right after visiting her friend, and doing so, she killed herself. No one really knew why.
I was devastated to hear the news. One, because I couldn’t believe that someone I knew well passed away, and two, because I thought she was happy. The more I rolled up this thought around my head, the worst it made me feel. Life is precious, and it’s hard to believe that something as precious as life can be taken away from us by us because of how we feel. We hear in social media today, everywhere, about people self-harming or giving themselves to their severe social anxieties, and we have to find a way to help them even if they can’t get medication or can’t get to a good mental processing problems professional.
I’ll to go back to my point. I want to tell all of you that you should write. Even if you don’t know how to write a good piece, you can still find a way to put all your emotions down on the paper because that’s
what’s needed. You can start by questioning yourself, “How am I feeling today?” and you write down how you feel. You can then go into “Why am I feeling this way?” or “Who is making me feel this way?” and you write down that as well. And here you reflect upon what you write. If you don’t feel like it’s a day to express yourself, then maybe you can write about something great that’s happening in your life. You can see the other side of reality, just as I mentioned before. So here you to question yourself, “What went well today?” I want you all to put your feelings down on the paper because if you keep them inside for a very long time, there will be a limit to how much our body can hold in. This is the reason why many people decide to take their life over and die because they can’t hold it in anymore. They can’t appreciate life anymore. So by writing it down, you will help yourself be more aware, be more organized, and your point of view and see another great side of reality. If you can’t find someone to talk to because you don’t think that anyone will understand you right, if you live in a country or a place that you can’t find any good mental problem professional, write. Writing is also an efficient way of communication. It helps your thoughts get better, and it helps you communicate and understand people better. It also helps yourself feel better, and it also helps you see another side of a great reality.
If I were to meet again my past self and get to talk to her, I was wondering how she feels about who I am today. I wonder if she is happy to see me laughs to see you surrounded by great friends who I trust and who trust me. Maybe this version of me isn’t smart enough to understand that she herself fixed everything. So what I will do is that I driver I grabbed her by her hand and I will tell her to keep doing what she’s doing see everything come together. I would also take her to the seashore sit in a rock and write a poem with her.