Author: TheAyeshaSite

I am a Black Guyanese woman. I'm thirty nine years old. I went back to college to take Early Childhood Education classes. I want to get a second 48-credit BA degree in Early Childhood Education by 2021. I go to NJCU. I have a BA in Creative Writing from NJCU. I graduated from NJCU in August 2015. I transferred to NJCU from Mercer. I have my AA degree from Mercer in Humanities and Social Science since May 2007. I write poems, I write memoirs, I'm a blogger and I am taking a children's lit course. I love reading memoirs. I also do book reviews from time to time. My favorite poet is Emily Dickinson. I grew up in Ewing, New Jersey. I live in Princeton Junction with my parents!

I almost couldn’t believe what my uncle said when the painter was painting my room.

I’m 38 years old but I wanted a pink room. The painter was painting my room and as he was rolling the light pink paint up the walls in my room he said “I almost can’t believe Esha wants a pink room. Esha oh my God seriously a pink room.” My uncle visited me with his two children Gabriel and Amelia. I have been so proud of him ever since he started working for Spike Lee. It’s been years since I had seen my uncle and even his career as a film assistant for Spike Lee I hope he knows how proud of him I am. I know his children are really little.

People with disabilities have rights and can work.

Nothing gives me more independence than the ability to work. I do volunteer work. I worked part time for three years with my summers off as a mentor. I had so much stress about my work history being almost non-existent before. All that was left was my time spent as a volunteer. I know I want the independence of a full time job but I am also studying for the Praxis Core. I took a prep class at NJCU and the professor told me I needed to review grammar. I will do that for the next few weeks and in early January I am going to reattempt the Praxis Core reading.

I chose myself in my early 30s.

I refuse to give other people power letting how they feel about me effect how I feel about me. I buy myself nice clothes when there is a sale. I treat myself a lot of the time. I’m middle class. I have my mental illness. It doesn’t have me. It’s always kind of been a struggle for me in my life. All it took were successes in my 30s. That helped me a lot with gaining confidence in my own abilities. I work part time. I also volunteer with NAMI. I’m looking forward to Christmas and New Year’s day. My 39th birthday is in late January 2020. I am going to enjoy the life I have. I will just keep on living. I don’t want to die. I have a difficult illness too.

I see myself through different eyes now that I’m in my 30s.

People gave me compliments and I started to feel better about myself after maybe turning 30 or 31. I felt good about being me for the first time in my life really. I told myself “Esha you are nice too.” I know sometimes even if people compliment you most people don’t realize that they need to look within if they want to build their confidence as a person. I had a difficult adolescence. I was a little girl when a female teacher than liked me skipped me two grades. I was one of the students in her school and she liked me. I had a few nice experiences in college but I realized I could have done better but the way I procrastinate is crazy. I now focus on taking one class a semester and I just devote my free time to reading a few chapters of a book. I read a book a month. I’ve read ten books in the last year including Issac Mizrahi’s memoir. It’s really a good book so far.

I started getting chiropractic care in my mid-20s. I had great luck at finding really good chiropractic care.

I recommend wholistic health. I also say an apple a day keeps the doctor away. I believe all health comes from fruits and vegetables. A plant based diet has always been healthier. I eat fish and certain seafood but no to meat. I love vegetarian chicken salad sandwiches. I love salads with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette. I know salmon is a good fish. I also love fresh bread and even fresh bagels.

I worked as a mentor for students with intellectual disabilities for almost three years.

I had a job at the local community college for three years. I found out the first day that I was enjoying the work I was doing as a mentor. I thought of my experiences just working with the students in the program called D.R.E.A.M. acronym for developing real expectations for achieving mastery. I really established a rapport with the students. I feel like most of the students in the program seemed comfortable with me. I felt great especially when Dr. Onaitis who was the counseling specialist at Mercer offered me the opportunity to give back to Mercer. I felt great just being able to give back to my alma mater and creating my own success story. I was a Mercer alumna and I had some problems there but Mercer is a good school and most people are approachable and nice. I don’t think you can be free of problems they go everywhere you go.

I started writing poetry when I was a child.

I just love writing poetry. I am working on a course in how to write for kids too. I really got excited when the department chair told me “Ayesha you will be getting your Special Ed cert. I worked at my alma mater Mercer County College for three years. Mercer is nice school but I got stolen from a lot. I don’t really think there’s ever a time when you can feel safe unless you do what I do now keep your cards and you school ID and your money around your torso by way of keeping a crossbody bag. You can lose everything if someone steals your wallet. I remember not being able to even eat lunch because that day forty two dollars stolen. Thank God he just took the money and not all my cards.

My difficult illness makes me feel bad most of the time.

When I first had onset of my illness I was a new high school student at a Catholic high school in Brooklyn. One of my professors told me he loved my handwriting. I felt good. I can’t really explain how I became ill but my rough first year of high school and fear I’d get beat up by mean girls at school who also stole from me. I got my gym class uniform stolen and I had sneakers stolen as well. I remember going shopping for these Reebok sneakers with the colors of Africa red, black and green that had just came out in 1993. I had been through a lot of bullying but nothing more than verbal abuse. I got teased but I also wore a size 14. I was around 12 and a half years old and I had signs of becoming ill at age 13 where I would hear distant voices that became loud, mean or angry voices in my head. Socialization was something I didn’t have in high school with other teenagers. I feel like the girls being a year or two older than I was and me skipping two grades caused them to be jealous of me. I felt proud that I was on track to graduate from high school at age 16. I know teachers are there to support students and I had teachers like me in school.