Not because I can't write or analyze, but because I'm not proud of what I produce.
All my life I've been a part of situations I can't control. My mother's income (or lack thereof), for instance, was predetermined mainly because she lived most of her life outside of the country. Watching her struggle and knowing there was nothing I could do to help her made me weak. It made me vulnerable and useless, and it's definitely a feeling I despise. It got worse when I was given pseudo-fathers. My mother has been with a number of men: my father, my brother's father, and now my step-father. After she left my father in Cuba, my opinions didn't matter when she chose to share her life with someone new. I was wasting my breath, as this became another situation in which my thoughts and feelings were casted out and I had to deal with the repercussions. I define weakness as not being able to confide in my potential ability to do well with something. My experiences have made me feel weak, feel vulnerable, feel unresourceful, and so does English. .
I was never taught to control my thoughts well enough to express them in writing. Words have never been on my side, as people have always used them to establish my worthlessness. I could never use my words to express my dislike for the way my mother blamed me for her disfigured love life. I longed for the days I could go home and not hear my parents fighting about their own issues, because silence helped drown out the unnecessary. I also couldn't use my words to stand up for myself when bullied and treated unfairly. I remember being embarrassed or reprimanded for wanting to sound confident but ultimately using words improperly. So, whenever I was told to write an essay reflecting my opinions on a certain piece, I panicked, because I never thought my opinions mattered enough to write down. It was never about not knowing the language, as to this day I practice English more than I do my first language, but it is more about adding meaning to words and using them as a medium for expressing myself.
