Christopher O’Neil Jenkins
Prof. Vinson W. Jaye
ENG 101-102
Narrative Essay Finale Draft
19 January 2016
Words without Sound Are A Valuable Thing Words are simply words because they refuse to be anything else, they are not. Time is simply time because everyone believe there is nothing more than just a few seconds in every brief encounter, no matter how brief it is. Space is vast and empty and will always be vast and empty because there is always room for error or so I thought. I use to be someone who wrote about and described only what I saw and felt in the quite miserable childhood I found myself to have. However, it never crossed my mind once that something so silent, on paper, could make so much noise and mean so much to me. It became the instrument of the performance that I am allowed to perform every day and hopefully to the end of my days. Writing is an object, a subject, a talent, and a path. The way you see it is entirely up to you, but for me it is and always has been something I could never stray far from. My life began when I was born, but the life I am talking about is the one I was dealt at the age of five. My mother and father got divorced when I was very young. It weighed heavily on my shoulders that I was somehow to blame and if I did not exist everything would have turned out differently. In fact, every human being knowing or simply ignoring it must live knowing the impact they have on the world around them. When you look at facts and the world from a realistic point of view you can see it as only being corrupt and evil around every corner. Simply shaking my head to deny such things as spoiled children often do usually did the trick, but at the cost of hiding myself in my childish delusion. My speech and writing skills were terrible when I began school to the point where no one could understand me and I had to be taken to a special class. Again it struck me that something was wrong with me. I would cling to happiness and hope even as I lost pet after pet making the side of my house looking grim like a cemetery. There was no relief from the stress and only more grief as life went on, however these chain of events did in fact bring me to something called a wild life documentary. In a kind of curious way I watch marathon upon marathon about this cycle the narrators called the circle of life even if it did seem a bit grim. Fascinated by the details, the description, or maybe even the overall tone of someone who was paid to speak so fluently I began to imitate them just as stick insect imitates a leaf. At this point the sound of words became the imaginary subject of my interest and if I could copy that sound I could capture the essence of speech as well as writing. I was always very shy, compacted in the little space I kept to myself, and overall alone and unable to communicate. I eventually got past my instinctive mumbling and tried to communicate with kids my age however the idea of not knowing how fast to say each word led to each word sounding like a car crash of sounds and vowels. When I failed I would become very upset and the anxiety of confinement led to my hand always being shaky making my hand writing like that of a chicken with a pen taped to its feet. Often I would draw to express how I felt to the people around me seeing as writing was an object and talent I surely could never obtain. I could never be the fastest, the strongest, the best at coloring, or the best at making my ideas come to life with the hands I had because I only saw failer written on them. Then something happen that would change my life forever. My mother who always supported me, even in the end, told me that she liked the mother’s day card I made for her and the word love in big hand writing was very good. “In fact, she said, they were the best she had ever seen.” Ever since that day I improved my hand writing as best I could by drawing each letter over and over again until I couldn’t draw it any more. Pages upon pages filled with only one letter littered my floor as I strived to make her proud. My words had improved by the third grade allowing me to rejoin the class and do work with other children once again, however my sentences were too simple as if I was from a barbaric tribe. It soon got to the point that I would be removed from the class once again if I did not improve any. My friend Travis had stuck with me since kindergarten acting as many would say a translator for me, but even now at this time he could not understand what I was saying as increasing anxiety hindered my speech. It seemed words without sound was useless talent from the very beginning I thought as I once again at this time went into a kind of confinement inside myself only finding comfort as I hide from the world filled with so many words. Once again seeking my sick mother for advice she told me that I had a choice and that with effort would decide how far I went. “Do people really decide to fail”, I asked myself. I thought real hard on this and when the day came to test how much we improved I made an A on the test. My score had tripled from reading big books, looking at the dictionary no matter how bad I wanted to watch TV, and giving everything I had as I put my penmanship into practice. All of this would be impossible without the confidence I inherited from my mother and the talent she allowed me to see. Not all writing is sunshine and rainbows and it is an author’s choice to determine how each one of his or her stories end. Although the ironic truth of life is we are the characters of an even bigger story called history as a great puppeteer of some sort or force of unknown origins writes how every one of our parts is going to end. Writing is a tool I can use to communicate better, express emotion, and the shape and forms of the things that enter my sight. It has propelled me into the distant future I could have never foreseen for myself today and it has gained me countless friends and gigantic release from all the anxiety I held for years. Thanks to writing I have a life worth writing about as those simple words on that silent piece of paper hold more value than gold and I am so happy I was blessed with such a valuable thing at my disposal. The only thing you have to pay for when it comes to writing is not learning how to do it in the first place.