Hello…anyone that reads. This is going to be something completely new I try and kind of have been wanting to do for a while, all it took was for a classmate to prompt me into doing it. All in all, I hope to do another one of these journal entries with my poems, ^__^ enjoy!

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Give me love.

I watch her through the sanguine tainted glass.

I see her majestic curves and delicate skin.

I feel her gentle gaze interlocking with my eyes.

Her body is too beautiful not to admire.

I want to see her without the glass.

I want to touch her soft body.

I stare at her with lust and hunger, but her stare is peaceful and desiring of love.

She wants me to hold her. She wants the protection of love.

She presses her hand to the sanguine glass. 

It shatters into a brilliant storm of red. 

The twinkling red glass is quickly consumed by the darkness of light.

Her soft pale skin is no longer clear.

She is now a sore to my malignant eyes.

Her curves are no longer elegant.

Her gaze no longer meets mine.

I want to say something to the gentle creature I was so hungry for…moments ago.

Was it really moments ago? I think.

I hate her now.

Her body is too disgusting to bear.

She was perfect and I wished I could have her.

But now she’s mine and all I can think of is how much I wish I didn’t have her.

I just wish she stayed behind that tainted glass so I could always desire that perfection.

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In class, we have come to read, the short story “Bananafish” by J.D. Salinger, and I really enjoyed everything about the short story. In it, I got a glimpse of a society that was once incognizant of the perilous mental disorder known as PTSD. Salinger doesn’t even show the darkness of the disorder until the end of the story where the protagonist shoots himself in the head to liberate himself of his treacherous past in the army. In this story, we see how blind our society was back then and is now…how those around us who may care for us don’t even pick up or realize the darkness within us. Salinger, however, does portray the antidote to a person’s mental illness–it is quite simple yet difficult to find. This “antidote” or “savior” would be a person, that can share with you the beauties of life, in their purest of ways…they are with you every step of the way through your struggle. Just one person is enough to be someone’s bright place. A single person can thrust you forth into the world of light and force you to exit the pitiful existence in the darkness.

The following week we dived right into reading short stories and exploring the author’s perspective on how they deliver their messages through their stories. One such author-Charlotte Perkins Stetson- has truly left a mark on me with her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” in it she details the descent of the narrator into madness through epistolary writing. This effective form of letter-writing allowed me to feel yet not feel what the narrator experienced, it allowed a small glimpse into her soul and what she truly felt. Her view of a woman stuck behind a wall-paper was in fact just a mirror…the narrator had been bound by the males around her, she did as they said and she could only be herself when alone. Stetson, really probed at my mind with this one in that it showed how those struggling often have to hide their true selves for others. I hate that very much, I hate the fact that a human has to hide and shun themselves because others don’t deem it worthy of actual attention. Stetson expressed freedom in such an eloquent way, through the narrator she exposed the innate lack of freedom we are born with, the slavery of judgment. We are enslaved not by our own minds but by each other’s minds, we fear and hold back our true expressions in hopes to present our self in the best light possible.

My first week in my psychopathology and literature class was pretty good, I find it exciting that I finally get to be myself in a sort of way. I can’t wait to see the new perspectives I will gain in the world and also how literature affects it. So far, we only really got into introducing ourselves and also presenting an article that we found interesting that was based on psychopathology. It wasn’t much but this just allowed me to actually feel comfortable and feel like I could bring out something that I wanted to say. As for this course, I don’t really mind if I read articles or books I don’t like, as long as I am learning something new about the world or the eccentric inhabitants of it around us I will be fine.

-Brandon Vasquez