Sirkedzhyan 1

Amanda Sirkedzhyan
Professor Vana DerOhanessian
English 115
15 September 2014
An Armenian Girls Escape
Everyone needs an escape, a way to just forget their pain and problems. My escape is
literature, from reading a simple book to writing a poem. No matter how sad or under the
weather I ever am, I grew up having literature to cheer me up and distract me for just a split
second. Poetry has and remains my top choice for when I am trying to escape the pressures of
everyday life; anytime I need to release myself I just need to write a simple poem. Literature is
not just poetry though; it is hundreds and hundreds of ancient novels and stories dating back
thousands of years. Literature is different writings that effect each person in a unique and
different way. Growing up in an Armenian family, I never felt comfortable to share my love for
the language with my parents. Would I be crazy if I told them that I wanted to be a writer when I
was older? Would they be completely mad if I said I wanted to be a poet when I was all grown
up? So many questions were continuously going around in my head, leaving me confused and
wondering. Wanting to share your work with the world, but scared of what your parents and
relatives would think when they actually read what you had to say was a worry constantly on my
mind. Being from such a tight knit family, it was actually a bit of a relief to have something that
was all my own. To be able to hide away this secret part of me that no one knew about.
Although, literature was without fail my escape and poetry was the one thing that made me
happy, I was constantly battling the strong fear that my family would not accept my dreams and
my passion of poetry.

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There are two different dialects to being an Armenian, Eastern Armenian and Western
Armenian. I am Eastern Armenian, or what we call hayastanci. My parents and grandparents
come straight from the capital of Armenia, Yerevan. They spent their entire childhood there,
growing up on the customs and cultures of the land, which is one reason why they are so strong
on the Armenian ideals and the Armenian way of life. They do not agree with the way most
teenagers act and dress because they were never exposed to it as children themselves. You think
any of them grew up in the small villages of Armenian dreaming and hoping to be writers and
poets? My assumption would be no, because being a writer and a poet is not the norm for a great
job in my parents opinion. In their eyes, they see it as more of a hobby or a momentary thing and
less of a passion; as my mother says, . See in
Armenian that is translated as, when you are older you will learn to forget. My mother used to
repeatedly tell me this, in hopes that one day when I grew up I would forget all this poetry
nonsense and focus on the things in life that were most important. But I hope she can see now,
this is not nonsense but it is my everything.
Because my parents come straight from the small villages of Armenia, I know what
author Amy Tan talked about when she mentioned broken English. My parents have slight
accents but my grandparents can barely communicate a few words from the English language.
My childhood was spent at my fathers mothers home, helping her cook food and tidy the home.
But the one thing I always had to help her with was communication, whether it was with the
apartment landlord or the man who delivered her medications, I was always her number one
translator. The way my grandmother needed me was the way author Amy Tans mother needed
her. -A speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed
to me, the nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard

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English that I had learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at
home with my mother. This line from the essay spoke to me the loudest because I understood
and related to it completely and entirely. Having a form of slant English that I spoke with my
grandma, sounded like I had never spoken a word of English in my life while I threw in a couple
Armenian words from time to time. That is not what I had learned at school, if I wrote an essay
the way I talked to my grandma it would have made no sense and I probably would have failed
completely. Having two different forms of English to remember and to use with certain people
isnt necessarily an easy thing to do, but its something that I grew up doing and it has become
something so simple for me now.
Pages and pages of notepads, filled with my poems and more and more are added daily.
Yet Ive only shared my poems with a few close people in fear that somehow my parents would
end up reading them. I grew up surrounded by people who never accepted me the way I was and
who were constantly judging me. I am afraid of having my poems be judged the same way, I
guess I am just afraid of being the center of the jokes like I have been before. But no matter who
was laughing at me, I ran straight home and I wrote a poem. A lot of kids write poetry now-adays, even though they may not be very good, it is just a form of getting your thoughts and your
emotions down on a piece of paper and out of your head. Thats was always it for me; poetry was
a way to get all the crazy nonsense that was flying around in my head onto a sheet of blank
paper. Now this is something I have never had the courage to do before, so bear with me if you
do not enjoy reading it, but here is an example of one of my recently written poems that I enjoy
keeping to myself most times.
Deep inside the beast roars; fighting, breaking, trying its hardest... to be free. But the
walls are so strong, that even a beast that big - could ever break free. So what makes you

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think, it wont lose its mind, it wont cry itself to sleep? Just because its different, doesnt
mean its suffering- any less. Whoever put it in there, is the true beast. Is the true evil, to
torture it like that. One day, the beast will be free- and it will be avenged.
This poem is one of my more recent entries, it was about being that one child in class thats shut
out or ignored. Being that one person who just feels like no one cares about them, what they have
to say, or what they want. I know what it feels like to be shoved to the side as unimportant, and
this poem was meant to show what it really feels like from the childs perspective. Being
different is perceived as weird and unheard of, when it is nothing but a beautiful thing to be your
own person. My heritage and where I come from adds to who I am, but it does not and will not
define me.
Being from a background with such strong beliefs pushes me to keep certain things to
myself. In order to avoid not being misunderstood by my family members and relatives, I kept
my love for English and poetry a secret. Not allowing anyone to ruin that escape and passion,
keeping it to myself so that I would never face having to lose it. Without poetry, I dont really
know where I would be because no matter how bad things ever got I had poetry to let it all out.
Only a few of my close friends have read those poems from my darkest points and they know
how much of a relief poetry was for me back in those times. When you go through school feeling
alone, you need to find something to turn to that can be yours, something no one could ever take
from you, that is why I kept my poetry away from my family. I would not allow it to be taken
from me, no matter how much my parents disagreed with it or did not approve of it. When
someone loves something as much as I loved poetry, they should not anyone take it from them.
Be strong on what they believe in, because no ones opinions should stand in the way of their
happiness.

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Work Cited
Tan, Amy. The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. New York: Putnam, 2003. Print.