I’ve been tying up loose ends in my life and one of them resulted in me acquiring a memoir I wrote from when I was 18 years old. This is that memoir.
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Shawn Brelvi
Mrs. Kurland
Creative Writing II Honors
23 March 2015
Looking Good
When I was five, I was deathly afraid of the Optometrist. As the clock ticked in the inviting waiting room I played with a contraption in the middle of the room that I was fascinated with. But, when the doctor came in, I cried, screamed, and ran away. I backed into the corner of the room and had tears flowing down my face. Eventually they calmed me down and put the drops in my eyes. Sure enough, my eyes were crap and I needed glasses. I went into school the next day and asked everyone if they were going to make fun of me and call me “four eyes”. I even asked the coolest kindergartener what he thought and he said he didn’t care. Despite what they said, they teased me for my glasses. So much for their promises. I became incredibly self-conscious whenever I put them on. I felt inferior when wearing them because people associated people who wear glasses as “nerds” and I didn’t like that one bit. My friends always reassured me that the glasses didn’t make me different. Other kids seemed to wear glasses and be fine. Why was everyone picking on me? Looking back, I was overly concerned with what people thought of me and my glasses.
***
In the 1st grade I had the Game Boy Advance and was an avid Mario and Pokemon player. But, I wanted an upgrade so I asked my mom for the Gamecube. They agreed and I was elated. I went to school the next day and told everyone. They didn’t share the same emotions I did. I didn’t care because this is where my love for videogames would start. Videogames shaped me to be who I am today. Afterall, you are pretty sedentary when you play them. All jokes aside, videogames put me at peace and made me go into this alternate world. If anything was going wrong in my life I’d load up a game and get transported. I would be in this happy place for hours until I had to sleep. Many late nights were spent playing videogames.
This purple cube would be integral to who I am today. I made many friends through video games too. I played Super Smash Bros. Melee with my cousins for hours. Another favorite of mine was Kirby Air Ride, which I played for countless amounts of time. I also loved playing Naruto fighting games because of my love for the TV show. To this day I still play the Gamecube because the games for it have an endless playability.
***
Luckily, at the end of 2nd grade we were given this blue and white colored form. My grubby hands felt this cold packet that had a lot of information regarding instruments that 3rd graders could play. My sisters both played an instrument so I thought to myself, “Why not?” Over the summer I purchased this violin and I was pretty excited just to play it. After a few months went by, the 3rd grade had began and I was ready to play the violin. On the first day of class I was lead into a small, dingy, classroom with three other kids and a woman by the name of Mrs. Scharf. She stood at the front of the room and told us we couldn’t use our bows for a few weeks.
My heart sunk at the thought of not being able to use the coolest part of the violin. We were going to be plucking until October. One thing I couldn’t do is that I couldn’t read music. My ears were a much more valuable and reliable tool. I didn’t associate the notes with their actual names but rather with the note of the string followed by how many fingers needed to be on the string. My music looked like the answer key to a multiple choice test. “2A 4B 3E”. This carried on throughout my middle school years too. I constantly felt inferior to the other violinists because I didn’t know how to play. Sheet music was a waste to me because I had my ears. One positive thing is that most people were impressed when they found out I couldn’t read. Because I couldn’t read I was always put in the back of the Orchestra with the less skilled violinists. It felt degrading but I still got to play.
I wouldn’t learn how to read music properly until my 16th year when a man named Mr. Havington changed everything. He taught me how to play the violin properly. He also sparked my interest in classical music. I love listening to classical artists like Bach and Dvorak and even some more modern artists like Meyer and Kennedy. Discovering the violin opened up the door to the musical world for me. This instrument was merely a stepping stone and it would be at my neck for nine long years.
***
Tears rushed down my face as my mind processed what was written on the paper stuck on the wall. I had finally gotten a solo in a school production and it was my time to shine on the big stage. I was going to display my Soprano I voice to the entire grade. For those who don’t know, Soprano I is the highest voice in the choir. I was elated. I got to sing for people and showcase my talent. When I got back to the classroom I was asked an all too familiar question, “Why are you crying?” This question has been asked to me hundreds maybe thousands of times. I cried if I was happy, sad, or pretty much anything.
To me, crying is normal. I cry a lot, even to this day. My parents get furious when I cry. Why should an eighteen year old boy ahem, man, be crying? Crying is a way of unscrewing the bottle cap and letting it all out. I tend to bottle things up all the time. I usually don’t have a place to go or am too lazy to go to said place. I’d much rather let the salty tears run off my cheeks and wet my pillow or shirt sleeve. I think of crying as a great way to help yourself if you’re ever feeling down. Obviously I wouldn’t cry in front of everyone but I usually do it in private. It’s incredibly helpful. I suggest you try it. If someone cries in front of me I’d help them and tell them that it is okay to cry. A woman by the name of Adelia told me one day that it is okay to cry. She changed my idea of crying and let me know that it’s important.
***
I was transitioning into this new environment with so many other kids. I’m fairly confident that everyone agrees that middle school was not the best time of your life. 6th grade was miserable. I had just lost one of my best and only friends so things were looking great! The one thing I didn’t lose was my love for performing. I was still in the school Orchestra and still a Soprano I. I got a role in the school play and the spring musical. Those two productions were truly amazing. Although I didn’t necessarily understand the plot of the shows, I loved to be on stage. Everyone's eyes were on me. Especially when I hit a super high note that even girls couldn’t hit.
Above all, I craved attention. For a majority of the year I would purposely hurt myself. I would walk into doors, desks, and have books fall from my locker which would conveniently land on my neck. People would laugh and laugh and I thought they were my friends. It turns out they were laughing at me, not with me. I didn’t discover the difference until I was older. I did this because I was trying to find out who I was. Was I the nerd, the theater geek, the performer, the jock, the list goes on forever. 6th grade makes me cringe. I thought I was so edgy because I listened to Slipknot, wore all black, and shirked on my academic responsibilities. I would only do homework for certain classes because in my mind that was okay.
I also had my first experience with a girl. She was super bipolar and I was super awkward. I harmlessly asked her to a school dance and she vacillated for weeks whether she wanted to go with me. She was very fickle with all her decisions. We texted all the time but we were both 12 years old and shouldn’t have been in a relationship. Since I was so “madly in love” with her, I wrote her poems all the time and even a song. She loved them but then thought I was really creepy. I don’t blame her. That summer, I went to Britain to visit my aunt and she took that as a sign of me not caring about her and fought with me every single day when I got back. It all culminated to us breaking up because we we’re done with each other.
***
7th grade was a drastic change for me. I found a solid group of friends, my grades were in check, and I had the Justin Bieber hairstyle. However, there was one thing that still made me upset. My looks. I’ve always been self-concious about my looks but I’ve never done anything about it. I had these dorky glasses and they didn’t fit the person I was trying to be. I wanted to be the ladies man with the swagger and looks of a king. I also liked being funny but ultimately, my glasses were holding me back.
Looking at myself in the mirror was always hard. I used to put my glasses on then take them off all the time. One version was party me and the other was nerdy me. Nerdy me loved Pokémon and taquitos. Party me was loud, obnoxious, and incredibly facetious. The ultimate solution was to get contacts. These contacts would give me a new “look” on life. Getting those contacts transformed me. I became more outgoing and I felt happy because people liked me. I carried this persona for four years until I had a huge existential crisis. The line between me and fake me was blurring and I needed a way out. I decided to kill fake me and embrace who I really am. I’m content with who I am and wouldn’t change a thing.
***
It is inevitable that one will get offered drugs or alcohol at least once in their life. In 8th grade, this happened to me. It was a cold day in winter when I was hanging out with one of my close friends. He said that we should go to this place to go hang out with his “other friends”. Little did I know, that these “other friends” were high-schoolers. By the time I realized that we were at the spot. “Why are we in a tree?” I asked. My friend then pulled out a small baggie and a pipe. I had never seen this before and I knew what it was and what it could do to me. I told them I’d pass and I left the spot and went home. I stopped associating myself with them. That was not a thing I wanted to be doing.
Little did I know, my sister was going through that hell. I didn’t want to fall down the same path. The same thing went for alcohol. Alcohol had always been pushed on me and I actively started to say no after I realized what it had done to my mother. It turned my mother into a monster that I didn’t want to turn into too. A drop of alcohol has not touched my tongue and I don’t plan on it ever doing so. Morally, it feels incredibly wrong to me. I’m fine with others drinking due to it being ingrained in our society. When people ask me why I don’t drink I tell them “I’m not about that life” and take a sip of water on the rocks.
***
“Oh, No!” I thought after the teacher whispered in my ear that he wanted to see me after class. I was an impressionable, somewhat insecure, ninth-grader desperate to establish an identity; trying to emerge as the “class clown” was a risky endeavor, and I assumed my classmates and my rather stoical teacher had seen enough.
“Shawn, I kept you after class for a reason,” he said, with his eyes sharpening their focus, and his countenance contorting into a stern expression of admonishment. “What do you know about our forensics program here in the high-school?” My rapidly-beating heart-rate recoiled a bit, and the perspiration on my forehead began almost instantly to diminish. Even my rehearsal of how I would spend my first detention gradually dissolved.
Before I was able to fully regain my composure to respond to his inquiry, he told me there was a meeting after school for any freshmen interested in joining. Before the meeting concluded, I knew I had discovered a way to turn my behavioral liability into an asset. My English teacher that year frequently made mention of his philosophy in life: “Do that for which you have passion, and you’ll never work a day in your life!” “Well,” I thought to myself, “perhaps I have discovered my passion.
My commitment to forensics burgeoned into something even bigger than I could have initially imagined. What began as several hours a week evolved into several hours a day, culminating in Saturday performances and competitions. The other “forensicators” went from “acquaintances” to “friends” to “family”. Much like sports teams who function as a family, we became a family, and I was surrounded by people in whom I could confide, and people whom I could trust.
In addition to all of my forensics achievements, perhaps one of the most gratifying moments occurred recently: my eleventh grade English teacher had heard about my “ten-minute humorous interpretation” and asked all my teachers if I could be excused from my classes to perform my “skit” for all five of his English classes. To hear the applause and feel the appreciation from his classes was something I will cherish forever.
Looking back now, what I assumed would be my first high-school detention fortuitously turned out to be the key that opened the door to my passion. I certainly have other interests that I intend to pursue at the college level, but discovering that “inner peace” that I stumbled upon freshman year has provided me with the confidence and the conviction to tackle any future circumstance with which I will most assuredly be confronted.
Recently I found myself at the State tournament at TCNJ where I competed in my two events: Humorous interpretation and Improvisational acting. This States was my last one and I wanted to go out with a bang. People were already predicting me to do well because I’d done well throughout the year. The competition was a joy and I ended up advancing to the semifinal rounds of both my events and being a finalist in Improvisational Acting. This would be my 3rd year being a state finalist and my 2nd year being a finalist in Improvisational Acting. The final that I performed in this year was filled with my peers and hardened competitors. It didn’t phase me because I knew my end goal was to be a State champion and carry on the legacy that my mentors were a part of. I ended up doing a skit on the topic “A spoiled child gets taught ____________ by a cowboy.” I filled the blank with “how to be a man” and told a humorous yet heartwarming story about a boy named Derek. My performance was spectacular according to spectators. I thought nothing of it and waited patiently for the awards ceremony.
When the finalists came to the stage I was not nervous. I was calm, cool, and collected. The announcers said who had received each place and they weren’t saying my name. Was I really going to win the State championship? As they were about to announce 2nd place I looked to my left and gave my competitor a smile. “In second place, from Su-” is all my team needed to go berzerk. I remained composed and merely smiled, basking in the glory of being a State champion. My coach came over, handed me the two huge trophies, and gave me a hug. This moment was truly amazing for me and well deserved.