Blog
“No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.”
― Roger Zelazny
― Roger Zelazny
2/26/2020 1 Comment February 26th, 2020Telling Myself A Different Story: A Memoir Counterfactual Welcome back everybody. For today’s blog post in my English Composition I course, I will be working from Creating and Emotional Scene with Dialogue and Symbolism. I'll be looking back into that memory and questioning my decisions and actions. Asking "if I did this instead, how would this change the outcome?" This type of thinking and writing style is known as Counterfactual. For more information about this subject, I encourage you to listen to Rewinding & Rewriting: The Alternate Universes in Our Heads (NPR Hidden Brain Episode). Now if you're more of a reader than a listener I recommend reading Mark Twain's Two Views of the River.
In my recent Memoir, I stated, “When my Ex came to my house, I already knew something was up because ever since our breakup we didn’t really have a reason to talk.. It was really weird because we knew each other really well, had a relationship and weren’t talking for a long period of time so it made me very nervous seeing her unexpectedly.” I was wondering what if I didn’t answer my door? I think she would’ve left it at the door and I pick it up thinking it could be anybody that has left it there or she would leave with it devastated because she couldn’t show how she felt to me within that time. Also thinking, another quote from my memoir where I stated, “Then I saw that she went into her back pocket and pulled out wrapping paper. I was about to laugh, because it seemed like nothing. But I kept a straight face, and she gave it to me, she told me how much she loved me and gave me a kiss. Then she left.” What if I laughed and didn’t take her emotions seriously? She probably would’ve lost all respect for me and also think that I saw her as a joke from the beginning of the relationship resulting in thinking I broke up with her because of it. Another major quote in my memoir, I stated, “The minute I received it, I realized that it would give me good motivation. And it did. I still use it today to remember what we had, how much we felt for each other, although so young.” I’m thinking, what if it didn’t give me any motivation? What if it made me have a different motivation? What if it made me think about someone else? All I could say is that my perspective of life could be very different than how it is now. I probably would’ve thought about everybody back in my country, not only her. It could have given me bad thoughts on our past relationship or it would have meant nothing. The final quote I thought about was when I stated in my memoir, “It was noon and my father was asleep, and she decided to come to my place because I told her the day before that I would be leaving the country pretty soon. And she knows that I was born there and it was inevitable so I couldn’t grasp why she was being so emotional.” What if I didn’t tell her I was leaving? If she found out she probably would never trust me again because I wasn’t honest with her plus although we broke up, she might have felt she was the reason for me leaving especially if I didn’t tell her.
1 Comment
Sabatino
3/2/2020 01:34:20 pm
CIF
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Jeanliq MendezI will use this blog to explore the messy processes of writing and to make meaning. Archives
March 2020
Categories |