Growing up I always remembered every little detail in everybody's life around me. I was the first person to notice your new haircut. I was the first person to always remember the time you ate. I was the first person to remember that moment when you were at your lowest. My childhood was difficult being by myself. I didn’t have many friends, nor did many people like me. I don’t blame people for how they treated me, because if it wasn’t for them I never would have had this gift I have today. There were many times in my life when I saw events that I never wish I would’ve seen. I blocked it out, but every time I did I could still see it replaying in my mind. “Bella you were only 2. How do you remember what your crib looked like?” My mother states. I never could describe what I see, nobody understood it. Joan Didion was the first person who finally understood me.

Didion wasn’t this intellectual woman who wrote with technicality. Didion wrote because of what she saw. Didion told us, “Let me show you what I mean by pictures in the mind.” I would close my eyes and stare at the blank painted wall. Right then and there is where I saw the event flash through my eyes. I didn’t just see darkness, but I saw color. I didn’t just see flashes of colors, but I saw the colors of the events that would strain my eyes. Flashing heat through my body, making my head feel like it's hitting a concrete wall every .5 seconds. Every small detail was noticeable and particular. I believed that I was crazy, no one could see that tree, the way I see that tree. Didion was that person that saw what I saw through my eyes. “I would find myself concentrating instead on a flowering pear tree outside my window and the particular way the petals fell on my floor.” That petal looked sad. That petal seemed lonely. That petal seemed happy. I never could truly understand how those petals were feeling. Just as no one else could understand what I can see or feel from an event so horrid, I felt every flash in my body. 

I never knew who Joan Didion was before “Why I Write” but I feel fulfilled now. A day dreamer, non intellectual, a creative mind with images that shimmer. Joan Didion touched my eyes, but also my heart. That’s when I realized, I write to show what I’m thinking. Not just in my head, but to analyze every single thought and feeling. I felt everything in an emotional way, not logically. Why can I remember my father harming himself? Why do I still feel the heat flash? Was this my imagination? This wasn’t my imagination, but events that made me empathic. Made my writing emotional and have a deeper understanding of life. No matter what I felt, Joan Didion told me, “My eyes are just like yours.”