Creative Writing: Their Eyes Were Watching God

I didn’t become self-aware until the very end of my junior year. It took seventeen years, more bad decisions than I can count, and a moment where, like in a movie, a beam of heavenly light shone down on me and I just thought, “huh, I did that. That was me.” Except instead of one revelation, one epiphany, it was like all of my past stupidity just hit me, like Miley Cyrus’s wrecking ball swingy through my consciousness. It was the last real English 11 class I’d ever have before the exam the following week. My stomach was grumbling, there was ten minutes before lunch and I was staring at a blank sheet of paper. Silent as a room filled with seventeen year olds right before lunch could be, it wasn’t hard to concentrate. My task should have been

One cannot be fully mature without first being able to take responsibility for what they do or without knowing what kind of person they are. What are my morals? Am I true to those morals? This realization, like so many others, came to me after reading a book. Their Eyes Were Watching God by _______________. The story is about __’s three marriages, and how these led her to self-realization and freedom. The first time she was married, the man treated her like property and she knew that wasn’t what she wanted. The second man first charmed her into believing he was perfect, and then became abusive and controlling. The third was ____’s perfect man. He treated her as an equal, he was charming and he was funny. When he worked, she worked. They were perfectly matched, he was the “bee to her blossom.” Then he died. But it was after he died and she found her way home that she realized who she was. She didn’t need any of them to feel whole, but she was glad she had had them in her life. That was the feeling I had after disclosing the details of my messy Junior year with my teacher. I knew I had made mistakes, and I finally owned up to them even if it was just in my head. I’m not saying I don’t still make mistakes because in the words of Hannah Montanna, “everybody makes mistakes.” I’m just saying that I can acknowledge that