Misperception Essay

Misperception is something we do unconsciously. We don't even notice it because it is something we are conditioned to think. “ We are in danger of the one sided story” as Chimamanda Adichie said in her story called The danger of a single story. We have a single side story for anything and everything. Take the phrase “im fine” for example. It is the most misperceived phrase in the world. It is rare to have someone say i'm fine and actually mean it.

I for example use it alot and im not fine. I tend to put other people before me. Usually people would have a list and it would go 1.Myself 2.Family 3.Friends 4.School. Well for me it is 1.School 2.Family 3.Friends 4.Myself. When I was younger I did not have anyone to talk to about my problems. My mom left my dad when I was 2 but still came to visit on the weekends. When she did I did not want to bother her with my problems because this was the time to be with her and have fun because I would not see her for another 5 days. My dad on the other hand always had work he would leave at five in the morning and come back around six or seven at night. He was tired so I did not want to bother him with my stupid problems. My aunt well she only spoke spanish and I did not know spanish that well because I was taught english and everyone i knew spoke english. I could not talk to her the right way. In the way she knew. As I grew older i thought my problems were irrelevant because I had no one to talk to about them. So I kept all my emotions to the side and never thought about it twice. I still think that now. I mean from time to time I open up but you will never get the full story. This essay isn't going to be the full story either. It's rare for me to just tell a little bit but sometimes the box that I keep my emotions in gets overflowed and I need to let stuff out.

Keeping your emotions inside takes skill. A skill like that probably takes years. Years that I clearly had. Years of me learning how to not be the real me. When I hide my emotions its not that hard anymore. Usually I change the topic and take the attention off me. Sometimes that does not work that well. Sometimes my plan backfires. My friends keep insisting that I talk. Get through the emotion so that you do not feel it strongly as you do now. But I do not want to feel it anyways. I want to get rid of it and storing it is a way to get rid of it. To me. What I do next is that I just keep insisting i'm fine, I smile, I laugh about it, I get “happy”.

When my friends keep insisting that i talk my mind immediately starts to think negative things and excuses in why I should not talk. A common thing I think is “this will be a sign of weakness. I can not show them I am weak”. After that major one I start to think i'm worthless, my problems are worthless and that this is whole thing is not relevant. In the beginning I did not think this. I started at a very young age so it gave me the time to evolve my feelings. It gave me time to change. Clearly I did not. They just got stronger. When I was young my friends always came to me when they had a problem. So I got into the mindset of thinking wow they must think i'm strong because I had my share of problems and I handled them so well. I continued to think that they must think i'm strong so I can not show them anything else. That's when the weakness excuse came into play. I do not say this to my friends. I just keep insisting that it is okay, I will get over it “i'm fine”. They stop talking and then life goes on.

By that time all the attention was off me and I just went through the day. After the day progress the pain of that emotion would start eating me away. Once I got home