Reopening Old Wounds :: Personal Narrative, Autobiographical Essay

Reopening Old Wounds Professor’s Comment: Bob’s essay is an intensely personal, admirably honest introspective examination of his repressed emotions concerning his parents divorce. I would cry, but that would be a pointless waste of energy. It’s one of those things that I envied my mother. In a flash she could go from the stoic lady of the house to a sobbing goose. I never understood how. I’d go from astonishment to disgust to envy. I take more after my old man. I’ve never seen him shed a single tear. Then again I’ve never really seen him smile either. I grin a lot. I was supposed to be in my home town right now, tossing back cold ones and laughing with my best and oldest friends. My schedule wouldn’t permit it, however. It’s probably for the best. It’s never a good idea to hit one’s home town in a poor mood. I’d probably just end up hanging around the main drag, pissed off my ass and yelling at cruisers. Chances are I would end up in jail, or calling an old girlfriend and reopening old wounds that should have healed years ago. I wonder which of those two prospects is worse. Instead of expressing my emotions as I should, I have withdrawn them and locked them away deep inside me. Rather than call a friend and talk, or go walking, or listen to records, or break things, I am in front of the computer, writing. It is a safe form of expression; if this gets too revealing or too corny, I can always delete the file, or password protect it, restricting access to me alone. So the question on my mind lately has been why. What happened and when that has left me so numb to my feelings? I’ve tried countless times to trace it back and pin it down to an event, to that key moment when I started down the path of self-imposed isolation. Of course, Freud would insist I failed the oral stage, the stage where trust and security develop. It occurs usually around the second year of life, when parents wean their child. If all goes well—according to Freud—the child tastes for the first time independence from his or her mother and begins to explore that independence.