For as long as I can remember, I have deeply cared about the little things. I was always overly sensitive to those around me, overly in tune with people’s emotions, and spent my time constantly observing everything and everyone closely.

Still, to this day, I find myself in the same position. It means a lot to me to pay attention, to notice, to watch, and to feel. And although this was characteristic of me during my early childhood, throughout my teenage years, I so desperately wanted to get away from that part of me.

Through those years, it felt like I paid too much attention, noticed too much, and felt too deeply every second of it. I always felt like no one else saw all the little things I did, nor did they care about them like me. And in the mix of my awkward teenage angst and constant emotional turmoil, I found poetry.

This newfound world of reading and writing was a world where I felt, for the first time, completely understood. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by other people who noticed, watched, and felt the same way I did. At the same depth that I did. And as I was introduced to this new world, I found myself writing poetry every single day.

For me, it felt like the only place I could truly be honest about everything happening in my life. I wrote poems about my familial issues, my relationships with friends at school, overwhelming thoughts of my existence and my place in the world, the great burden of my feelings and how much I cared, and about all the little things around me that everyone else seemed to take for granted but I didn’t.

This fundamental aspect of poetry is what Patrick Rosal mentions in the New York Times article we read for class, “Poetry is Hospitable to Strangeness and Surprise.” He describes poetry as encompassing “observation and attention, reflection and memory, description, imagination, re-seeing and discovery.” All of these are what drew me into poetry. 

In middle school was the first time that poetry was taught in my English class. My teacher, Mr. Eleftheriadis, introduced me to Homer and Shakespeare, and it was that class that changed everything.

Not only did I fall in love with literature, poetry, and epics, but I fell in love with the details in every story. A part of his class I enjoyed the most was picking apart works line by line. As a middle schooler, my little brain was not nearly prepared for the sheer wisdom and magic that are laced between every line of the Odyssey and Macbeth, just to name a few.

In his class, I felt that I truly belonged. In every English class since then, I have always felt that way. The peers in them, the teachers and professors, and most of all, the literature have always been so inspiring and remain reminders that when it comes to noticing and feeling, I am not alone.

Since then and throughout my college career, I have been learning each and every day to return back to that little girl version of myself. I have been realizing that I want to notice, I want to watch closely, and I want to feel every second of it. I take pride in noticing the small things, paying attention, and caring immensely about the details.

As I have gotten older, I have learned that these are actually great strengths of mine, and the places where I can cultivate and grow them are in my English classes and in my photography classes. In both art mediums, I have found that my particular gift of noticing and feeling can be used to create narratives and stories, cultivate emotion through images, and learn how to intersect the two.

In an article that discusses the value and significance of poetry as a free space for language and politics, “Why All Poems Are Political” by Kathleen Ossip, she says so many things about poetry that I found incredibly intriguing, inspiring, and thought-provoking. One of the questions she asks in this article is:

“Is it possible that poetry wants to awaken your awareness of the essential and infinitely subtle suffering and joy of being alive?”

I found this question incredibly reflective of what poetry does to us. And I think it is true that poetry is about awakening, awakening to the world around us, taking note of all the things people fail to notice, and feeling all the emotions swirling about in the world. Poetry is about awakening to a world full of people who see and feel at the same depth that you do. Poetry is about a community of people who care; it is about no longer feeling alone.