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Shelbey Sparrow

Professor Robert Arnold

UWRT 1101-073

11 September 2015

Personal Literacy Narrative

Since my parents were officially divorced by the time I was two, I struggled with the idea

of love for a very long time. How could two people think they loved each other enough to

conceive a child only to be broken up within a year? It didn’t make sense and the struggle of this

concept haunted me for a quite some time. It wasn’t until August 21, 2015, Move-in day, that I

felt like I had truly mastered the concept and ideas of love. As I stood in my new room in

Hawthorn hall and kissed my mom, dad, step mom, and grandparents goodbye I realized that

love is expressed in all different ways and that I was literate in so many different kinds of love.

Learning to love my mom, dad, step mom, and grandparents, or my 5 “parental units”, all

differently was quite a challenge. Each of them have different love languages and express and

feel love differently. My mom, for example, has to take care of people in order to express her

love. She likes to know everything that’s going on and how I feel about every situation I’m in.

As I’m sure you understand, this is an annoying trait to most teenagers. I did not have the desire

to tell my mom everything about what was going on and would often reply with snippy remarks

such as “It’s none of your business quit asking.” I did this for quite a few years until one time I

went a little too far and she burst into tears. She looked at me and said “all I care about is that

you are being taken care of and being treated as the wonderful person that you are.” At that

moment, I realized that that’s what she needed for her to feel love from me. She needed me to

tell her about things so she felt like I wanted her involved. So from then on, in order to express

love to my mother I had to keep her involved. I found it easier to just go ahead and tell her

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what’s going on instead of making her ask. She seemed to be a lot more content with our

relationship after I started sharing things with her, even if it was just the little things, such as me

not being confident about the calculus test I had taken or what I had for lunch.

My dad on the other hand, does not show emotion on a normal basis in any way, whether

it be love, hate or just happiness. It took me up until I was 10 to think he even had emotions. One

night about 8 years ago, my dad and step mom got into a huge argument and she packed up some

of her stuff and left. I, being very close with my step mom at the time, was very distraught. I sat

on my bed and cried thinking she was never going to come back. At one point, my dad came in

to check on me and I recall throwing a stuffed animal at him and screaming that it was his fault

she was gone. He didn’t take this as I thought he would, expecting him to just shrug it off and not

care. He walked further into my room sat on my bed and burst into tears. Feeling awful about the

situation, I crawled over next to him and hugged him then apologized. Through his tears, he

whispered “I might have just lost my second favorite girl, I don’t need to lose my first favorite

also.” This coming from a man who doesn’t even say “love you” at the end of a phone

conversation, completely and utterly broke me. From then on out I had a solid understanding of

my dad’s emotions. They did exist. Just not in the way that most peoples did. My dad didn’t need

much to feel loved and appreciated, but when dramatic things happened he needed a little pat on

the back, and not a shove in the wrong direction like I had given him that night. Now, my dad

and step mom have two beautiful kids and I’ve still never seen him cry like that, not even on the

day of their birth.

With both my parents I had an enlightening moment that made me realize what I needed

to do to make them feel loved at all times. My step mom was a different story. We had a great

relationship until my freshman year of high school. My dad and step mom had asked how I felt

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about going to live with them, and doing what any freshman girl would do I chose to stay at that

high school I was already at and continue to live with my mom. Even though they had asked for

my opinion, they chose to take my mom to court for custody anyway. I was very upset and felt

completely betrayed. Up until this point I would have heart-to-heart conversations with my step

mom whenever I was feeling down or had gotten into an argument with my mother. This all back

fired when we got to court, because everything I had confided in her was used against me. The

entire time I was in court I was thinking that I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but in order

to do what I wanted, I had to. In the end I got what I wanted and was able to stay with my mom,

but my relationship with my step mom was completely in shambles. We didn’t even utter hellos

when we saw each other. It took me a long time to realize that my step mom was doing what she

felt was right for me and not just being evil. She was expressing her love for me by doing what

she felt was necessary to protect me even if it hurt my feelings. This made me literate in another

aspect of love, tough love. I now have to use this with my little siblings all the time. Even if it’ll

make them upset, I must pull them away from sticking their finger in the electrical socket to keep

them safe. My step mom was trying to pull me away from what she thought was dangerous.

Finally one of my last sponsors of my love literacy is my grandparents. They’ve showed

me what unconditional love is for a significant other. They’ve never been incredibly showy with

their public affection, but about a month ago I was packing for college and they both just

disappeared. I finished what I was doing and went downstairs to look for them, and what I came

to find was heartbreaking and uplifting all in one. My grandma was laying on her bed pale white

and looking sickly and my grandfather was tearing up while holding a towel to her head. Later I

asked my grandpa what had happened and he said that she suddenly fell faint and needed to rest.

I brought up how upset he looked and with tears in his eyes he said “I couldn’t imagine my life

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without her and taking care of her like that made me realize how quickly she could fall ill.” This

showed me how unconditional their love was and taught me what it’s like to love someone in

that way.

Even though all of these people taught me love in their various ways, they don’t agree

with each other in any way what so ever. However, they all agreed to help me move in to my

dorm together. This was an odd situation and put me in a lot of rough spots throughout the day. I

was trying to listen to everyone’s input and make everyone happy. Eventually when I finally

finished they were all standing around and chit chatting to one another about me and everything

I’ve done. Each one of them with a smile on their faces and proud words coming out of their

mouths. I looked back at all of them and noticed that they had all put their differences aside to

help me celebrate an important milestone in my life, because they loved me.

Over the course of my life I’ve learned people love differently and show it differently and

that you have to adjust to each person to show love the way that they prefer, and growing up

around all different types of love has made me have a very diverse way of love and interesting

path to my love literacy. I now show and receive love in many different ways. I have tendency to

not show emotion at all, to just want to know everything and be involved, and even show tough

love, but I have also developed my own personal type of love that is individual to me. I choose to

show love by going above and beyond for the people that I care about, and I enjoy nothing more

than when they do the same for me. I believe that love should be shown somehow in everything

you do. With my “parental units” being my sponsors of literacy, I learned various types of love,

and how I like to show it a long with the joys and heartbreaks that come along with love.

Becoming literate in love is a hard path that has many ups and downs but is something that

everyone should do eventually.

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