Sean Hamacher Elizabeth Hinnant English 1101 11 September 2013 The Transformation I hear the harsh words spew

from my classmates mouths, What is that crap on your face? It is a continuous onslaught; my moral weakens with every blow. Each word is a knife to my self conscious, cutting deep each time. No matter, I keep my head up high, spirits strong and walk through the gauntlet most call a hallway. This was a daily occurrence for me for six long years, it would start each day as soon as I stepped foot into school and not stop until I went home. To this day I have depression. Depression as a whole has personally affected my life in many ways, including in reading, writing and my vocal skills. I switched schools in the fifth grade, and on top of being the new kid, I had horrific, red, blotchy acne. I was the only person who had it at my school, so I was a human spectacle for people to come up and look at and share their cruel comments. I honestly do not think they understand how much it hurt me or how isolated I felt. It was as if I had no one to go to and talk to about it because that no one understood what I was going through. So, instead I just kept it all bottled up within myself and let it eat away at me from the inside. Doing so began shaping my literacy in a very unique way. One of the ways I released was through writing poetry. It was my getaway from the world, to just put in my ear buds and write. I averaged a few poems a month about different topics. I usually wrote about myself and my struggles using symbolism, and different people or objects to represent my depression, emotions, how I was a bullied. One of my favorite poems

was called Clouds, and I wrote it to represent how people were persecuted and how it made them feel. I talked about how that sometimes there can be a nice day with all pure clouds but it is suddenly ruined when a dark cloud comes and starts roaring thunder and cracking lighting. The pure clouds represent the innocent who are enjoying their day and the dark cloud represented the bully stomping in and ruin everyones day by harassing them. I also wrote about tragedies that were in the media, most notably September 11th I was intrigued by this particular even because of how depressing it was and how much pained was cause because of it. I took in all the hurt and sadness and used it for inspiration. I composed a poem called City of Grey, which was to express my personal sympathy and remorse to the victims in order to share their agony. I hardly ever found myself writing about happy things although on occasion I would write a poem about love or a girl that I liked. Most kids my age were not working on their literature skills, instead more concerned with when the newest iPod or music CD was coming out. I would share my poetry with my English teacher who I trusted. I felt comfortable sharing my works with him because he had experienced a death within his family and had depression like me. This acted as a bridge that I could cross in order to relate to him and have meaningful discussions with him. He taught me how to write clearly and better ways to state my point within my poems. He also helped me expand my vocabulary so that I was able to find more words that could be used as symbolism. He told me that I was ahead of most kids my age and said I had good understanding of literacy and different forms of English. I was glad to hear that my poetry was having a positive effect of sorts on me. My writing was being formed to material that took deep thought and had hidden meanings like how I will use symbolism to make the reader think and make works that are very open to personal interpretation. I still write to this day in this particular way.

Another way my depression affected my literacy was through my choices of reading and how much I read. I have never been too fond of reading, especially at a young age. I would always want to go outside and play or sit inside and watch TV. However, when I started to feel down about myself, I found comfort in books. I was interested in fiction books and loved how anything was possible in these fantasy worlds. I was so intrigued with how whatever someone wanted in these books it was possible for them to achieve. I always felt as if I could never attain anything I desired in my everyday life. I looked to these heroes in books as inspiration to fight for what I desire. One of my favorite books to read during this time was, Eragon. I liked this novel in particular because it was about a boy who was a nobody and who came across an extremely rare creature, a dragon. From there this beast helped him become a great warrior and led him on many exciting adventures. I always wished something would come along in my life and be my Dragon. My parents unfortunately were very opposed to me reading these types of novels because they involved witchcraft which went against our religion and did not want me to start thinking these things were actually possible. To counter this, I would use the internet to look up fictional short stories behind my parents back. This helped my literacy because it helped me learn new vocabulary and how to use them effectively. In the tales I read, they used very unique words to help describe their stories. Depression sneaks into every crack of your life where it can fit into. Especially in literacy, it seeped in and affected it in a negative way, most profoundly my vocal communication. Being bullied and picked on during school really made me want to just run away and hide in a hole. I would never want to raise my hand in class or participate in class discussions due to the fear of kids making fun of me. This caused my verbal skills to develop

slower than other kids my age. I would rather go stick my nose in a book than have to talk to someone. I would learn new vocabulary from reading books but I could not implement these new words into a conversation. The worst time for my depression is during the winter, it would be a cold and dark outside which is the same way I felt on the inside. I would hardly ever talk to people, even my family and friends. I would usually just get home from school and straight to my room and lock the door. Speech is the biggest part of literacy; it is used more than reading and writing. Everyday people will have to talk to others for simple communication, on average we say 16,215 words a day according to a study done at the University of Arizona. (ABC news) I would usually speak maybe 100 to 200 words a day if I was lucky. As anyone can see, this directly affects all forms of literacy. Without speech you do not engage in intellectual conversations, have debates, discuss new ideas or get references from another person maybe about a book or article. Vocal literacy is what connects it all, you learn so much more from talking to different people throughout the day than you do from reading a book. Even though I was practically handicapped in social interaction due to being bullied, I have made great strides in improving my speech and being able to understand a conversation and use my extensive vocabulary to form meaningful sentences. Since my junior year of high school I have hatched from the shell of anti-socialism into a friendly and outgoing young man. It is amazing how just one thing like depression can have such a profound effect on all aspects of literacy. I have fought through all the obstacles that have been put in front of me throughout my life to get to where I am today with my literacy. I still struggle with depression to this day but I have learned to get around it and funnel it into creative assignments like this one. I

now am reading more than just fiction books, writing things other than sad poetry and talking to more than just one person during the course of a day.

Work Cited PHILLIPS, ASHLEY. Study: Women Dont Talke More Than Men. ABC News, ABC News Networn. n.d. Web, 21 Nov. 2013.