Ugh, the other class ended up being so much worse. Basically, in this thing we are reading, nature is personified as a mother figure to the main character, but also as an extremely dangerous force that poses a serious threat of physical harm to her. When I was reading this on my own, this didn’t bother me in the slightest. I was totally comfortable with the idea of someone being both a mother and a threat and I didn’t realize that it was supposed to be a conflict of interests until the entire class brought it up confused. They were all asking questions like “is this supposed to be a mother or is this supposed to be dangerous?” and the teacher asked me for my opinion and I had the hardest time saying that I don’t think that it has to be mutually exclusive. Someone can be both a mother and a physical threat and saying that was really hard and really embarrassing and the entire room went dead silent after I said that and I couldn’t tell if it was because they could pick up on the fact that I was struggling with something personal regarding my mother or if it was because I brought up a possibility they hadn’t thought of. I don't know. It was just really difficult because I felt like I was the only one in the class who didn't realize that there was a conflict between "mother" and "danger", and I felt very isolated because I’m not usually that aware of how much my past altered my perspective on things and it was just a lot to handle. I ended up locking myself in the bathroom and crying for half an hour right after class ended.

I am okay though. On my way home after crying in the bathroom for a long time, I saw a cat in the window at my local convenience store. The cat lives there and comes out periodically. I was feeling sad so I decided to go in and visit him despite that my face was still covered in tears. He actually climbed up on the highest stack of boxes (because I am quite tall) and literally dried my tears by rubbing his head against my face. He melted my heart and fixed my sadness for the day.