The process I took for creating my project was through poetry. Although I do not write on a daily basis, when I feel very emotional about events in my life I find it easy to capture it with my words. I have also found out I am very good at it as well. The process I went through was reflecting back at significant parts of my life. These parts were taken from when I was twelve and my brother passed away, my individuality as I went through high school and college, and my first love.
The first poem "Something He Could Bear" is about the last day I saw my brother before he passed away. My brother had been battling cancer for five years and the summer before his freshman year of high school he got progressively worse. I was twelve at the time and remember how sick my brother was. That last day I saw him it seemed like a completely different person laying in the hospice bed. He had lost so much weight, was so pale he had purple coloration, could not eat, would get so exhausted that he needed help to sit up, and had such an overpowering cough from cancer spreading to his lungs. It was when he was sleeping in his bed and I sat next to him that I looked at him and saw little chin hairs growing. That moment I realized my brother would never grow a beard, he would never learn to drive, and he would never fall in love. I had to immediately go to the bathroom and cried. I looked into the mirror and pleaded to God to help my brother. The next day my brother was gone. I connected this part of my life to Klint’s museum because she examined all different religions through her work. I now identify as an atheist and I appreciate that Klint would have respected my perspective of the world because my parents do not accept it. This poem also related to Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development for identity vs. role confusion because I had to individualize myself from my parents. I was discovering my own identity through new values and beliefs that diverged from Islam.
The second poem I wrote "A Wave of Emotions" was about the first boy I fell in love with. When we met it was not a good time. He was in college and he was a senior in high school that had been in America for a couple of months. He was born and raised in Puerto Rico and my parents did not approve of him. We had to break up with unsettled feelings. It has taken me over a year to get over him and even though I no longer love him, I still have feelings from being with him I can not shake. This poem relates to Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development for intimacy vs isolation. I started having intimate relations and he was my first serious significant other that I fell in love with. He was the one I opened up and told everything too. Even in major stressful situations I will sometimes cry and wish I could tell him because he calms me down and when he talks to me he relaxes me. He and I no longer talk because it is hard for us to stay friends. We try to treat each other like a friend but then do not want to be grouped with others. For us to grow as individuals we decided to not talk because it is too hard for us. My poem talks about how my significant other completes me and when he is not there I have so many emotions that are difficult. He, in the end, saves me from the isolation, depression, weakness, and loneliness I felt from being lost at sea.
The third poem "My Arms, The Barrier to My Wounds" connects both my first poem and my second. Losing my brother has made me put up extreme walls for getting close to people. I was terrified of losing another person I loved so I would not get close to guys. My poem explains how I keep my arms to block potential people that could be significant in my life. It explains the guards that I have and my fear of losing someone else that impacts my life so greatly. I take my old experiences and the new ones I formed and show how I grew from it. So currently I just passed the identity vs role confusion because I showed my parents that I do not care if I am not dating a Muslim, I do not care what race my significant other is, I do not care if they agree with the types of relationships or free thinking ideologies I have, and that I do not care if they disapprove of my lack of faith. Now I am in the intimacy vs isolation stage and I am focused on me and finding my own love and do not care about others opinions. I do not want a reason that I marry someone is because of their religion. My answer will be I am marrying them because I love them and all of them not individual parts like their religion or ethnicity.
All of my poems center around themes like how your childhood affects you as an adult, individuality by separating from religion and how I have been trying to find myself, and how I struggle choosing between how I was raised with a Muslim family and how I feel internally. When I am around family I identify as Muslim, I fast during Ramadan, I pray in group prayers, but it is an act I have to put on. Therefore I struggle because I am lying to myself about who I am. So this is my struggle between my culture and family. Like the Red Star exhibit, she has so many ties to her family and their past. I too connect with my Egyptian culture but feel divided because of religion and because I feel unaccepted.
My work has always been around writing. I am a journalism and video production major and love storytelling. I would also like to get a masters in creative writing and possibly go into screenwriting. Poetry connects to both journalism and video production because you use so many symbols and metaphors and always thinking about how to convey your idea in a coherent way for your viewer.
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