My short haircut-speech

   Summer, 2007. It was hot. Not just ‘hot’, but sizzling, baking hot. And I could not tolerate it. I hated the way thick sweat clung on the back of my neck, feeling sticky and dirty. That was the reason why I decided to have a haircut. At that time, what I wanted was a ‘trim’ that would make some air passage to my neck, not a sporty-looking short hair-cut. The hairdresser asked me,

   ‘So, how would you like it to be?’

   I, at the age of eleven, did not know much about complexities of hair styles. So I simply said,

   ‘I want it short.’

   She asked me back if I wanted it to be like the one an actress had. It was the hairstyle of an actress whose name I heard quite often. She must have been famous. Therefore I said,

   ‘Sure’.

   What I was not able to grasp was the famous role she played in a drama. The drama was about the main character disguising as a man. And she was the main character. A few minutes later, I looked myself into the mirror and saw a boy. Not a boyish looking girl but a proper boy.

   Obviously, others saw me as I saw myself. Friends I hanged around with were mostly girls. Come next day, and I found a wrong depiction of myself as a person who constantly changed his girlfriend. My presence in women’s toilet filled a lot of female users with awkwardness and doubts. I kindly reassured that they were at the right place, that there was no need for such panics. For those who wanted to know more, I would add that I too, was as female as they were.

   After I got the haircut, even an image of me began to form. To my friends, I was somehow seen as a radical person. A person who would never be scared of anything. A person who would never cry. Quite on the contrary to their belief, I was a normal girl who abhorred scary movies and bugs. Whenever I had to watch horror movies, the hours were the time for mental breakdowns. However, I pretended not to care, acting to be at ease, unshaken. When girls shrieked upon seeing a big twelve-legged dark creature crawling on the classroom floor, I wanted to run away. Instead, I would behave as if everything was under control, as it was expected of me. The important thing was that in fact, I was not the person who people believed me to be. I just knew I was not. Nonetheless, I acted as if I was.

   Now that I have longer hair, the question ‘Are you a boy or a girl’ does not follow me anymore. And it was not the question itself that mattered at the time. Expectations mattered. I crunched and hid some parts of myself to fit into the mold people have formed. For what? To please them? Not to disappoint them? Or was I simply too afraid? At the age of eleven, I dared not contradict any expectations people were building up. As a result, at the end of the day, I looked into myself and found this stranger who was claiming to be myself.

   Expectations, they made me reluctant to approach for a change, be too conscious about what others may think of me. Expectations, they coloured me with fancy images which never belonged to me. Expectations. They were ties that bound me to limited, confined area. Having lost chances to cut them off myself, I had been dragged by them until I ran out of breath. When I got exhausted, I found myself under a mask. Living another person’s life, tied, afraid and fake.

Forgetting-losing(speech for English Conversation)

Forgetting-Losing

As an eight-year-old elementary school kid, my life was simple. I would go to the school which was at the time merely considered as a yet another place with round-metal slides and friends whom I could play hide and seek with. My daily routine at school was: playtime-lunch-playtime.

My parents were both extremely busy. Mom came back from work late, and dad was not even living with our family because of his job in other region. So instead of going home after school, I went to grandparents’ every day and waited for mom to come until the clock stroke 10. Grandparents were my second-parents. With them, I learned not to devour food before adults had their chance. With them, I began to think how cool it was to collect things- like books and souvenirs which were set up on the drawer in grandparents’ living room-and I started to collect things such as rocks, rubbers (erasers), papers, feeling so professional. With them, I realized how a night’s walk was not frightening at all but actually was soothing. They loved me and I loved them back. With them, I grew up.

My simplicity in life began to crack as I entered middle school. I fitted myself to a new daily life routine which did not include a whole chunk of ‘playtime’. Then I started to run as if I was chasing something like people around me were. At some point, having a dinner with grandparents once or twice a week began to feel like a burden. I would feel disturbed when I woke up on sweet Sunday mornings to pick up phone calls from grandfather. When I visited them, I made a promise to ‘drop in as often as I can’. A promise that I had to keep renewing. My precious ‘collections’ in a special box was crouching silently in the corner barely noticed.

Whenever I felt sorry, I reassured myself that it was not my fault. It was because the environment around me was getting more complex. I had to form new connections with other people to be a member of a group. Participate in ‘social activities’. I was always somehow, somewhat, ‘occupied’. There was simply not enough room to fit in everything. I still had some time to check things on Facebook in my free time, text people, eat out with my friends after the finals. Somewhere inside my mind, I knew the issue was about me, not about the ‘environment’.

Changes were brought about because I was forgetting. About time, memories, feelings I shared.

People forget. There are many things they can forget. They range from concrete objects such as their phones to something more sentimental as their memories. When you find something you used to care so much somewhat different. When you feel a gap time has set between you and some people around you. When you begin to think things you poured so much passion into were not so important. You are forgetting. It is surprising how one can so easily forget about things they cared so much..

Some people think this whole process of ‘forgetting’ as a part of growing up. According to them, it enhances your ability to categorize what it important from what it not. Once you fall into a habit of forgetting, you begin to forget some things mattered at all to you. You become so used to it that it is not a great deal anymore. You might think things are moving on to much important things, socially and academically productive things.

When you do forget, it means you are watching them escape and slip through your fingers. Forgetting means you are losing something. Another piece of valuable memory, sentiment, story. Forgotten, lost in your life. Do not let it slip away. Keep it. Grasp it.

Personal Narrative#1:For the first time

   I felt ‘it’. It was filling the hospital room every dropping second. Revealing its body gradually in the room blocked out of light, its shadow added itself to the darkness. ‘It’ was everywhere. On the curtains against the white wall. Under the single bed covered in white duvet sheet. Around the body of my grandmother. It was as real and close as a living person standing right behind. It was breathing in the same air I breathed in. In the corner of the room, I saw grandmother lying on a bed. I whispered,

   ‘Grandma, it’s me. It’s me.’
   No response. Instead, she inhaled air every second, relying on oxygen supplier. On top of her, there was a white duvet and a blanket which seemed too heavy for her. She lied down as still as a trapped water. I felt ‘Death’, for the first time in my life.

   I did not go to the hospital immediately after I heard grandmother was hospitalized. On hearing the news, my heart sank. However, I did not go. I tried to spend some time with her before she got hospitalized. Sometimes, I would simply sit on a sofa with her and stay like that for some time. I talked about trivial things in the outside world, in my life. How big the moon was last night, how I tried so hard to finish my homework, why exercising is so important, or simply, why I had my hair cut. As time passed, I could not but notice her liveliness faltering. When she seemed to have grown more tired and weak, and all I could do was to watch or be startled. On hearing the fact that she got hospitalized, I did not go immediately. Instead, I convinced myself I had ‘things’ to do. I was a high school student with a lot of important tasks and businesses to care about, and had new people to meet. It would have taken too long to pay her a visit. I could go next week. Maybe a week after, when I got out of dormitory. With piles of ridiculous excuses, I tried to comfort myself.

   In front of the hospital room, I stood hesitating. It was quiet in the corridor. The door was firmly closed and the room inside was dark. I opened the door, almost sensing something. Oxygen supplier and linger were attached to her body in the corner of the room. They were leaking out yet another second of life. The room itself was not so big, yet it seemed too big for grandmother. Biting down my sadness, I sat beside her. I felt the warmth of her hand. I looked at her face again. I talked to her as I used to, when grandmother and I were together on the sofa. I told her that everything was fine, that there was not a thing to worry about, that she could relax. For the first time in my life, I realized how one could choke from that overwhelming feeling.

   It was a bright day. Outside the hospital building, the sky was remarkably blue and winds carried with themselves some hint of spring. People wore thick winter coats no longer. Everything was normal. Everything was moving on. In the middle of the brightness, I thought how awkward I would have looked in the scene. Still feeling the warmth in my hand, I observed how things were ‘moving on’. For the first time in my life, I felt cruelty of the indifferent jolliness.