Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?
So many characters and universes appear before me as I sit in front of the television screen, watching cartoons. Nothing quells my thirst for an escape from reality more than animation. When seeing animated worlds unfurl, senses of absolute euphoria, freedom, and tranquility surge through me. Anything able is suddenly real, the hero always wins, and the physical laws of reality don't have to be followed. Cartoons have made me who I was as a child and am now. By using my talents of the written word, I hope to make millions of others as content as I am in the animated world.
After a long day of reality, a few hours of animated zaniness and boundless possibilities are definitely a welcomed change. Sensations of exhilaration, liberty, and contentment flood my mind in the animated world. I also have the opportunity to experience other characters' lives in fictional universes where my imagination truly gets to grow. A lingering truth slowly ascends as I visit the worlds that I love so much — what I see isn't real, what I experience can never be. Even so, I am happy in the animated worlds that I visit. I may not ever be able to visit them, but I can create them and help others feel what I feel: pure happiness and the sense that anything is possible. As with wonderful music, when I experience a masterfully made animated story, I succumb to my emotions and just let them pour out, more often than not, in a wave of tears. When I see a heartbreakingly beautiful scene, I suddenly experience this ecstatic frisson, as if a storm of fire has been poured over me — a visual Gemütlichkeit on the screen. It is because of these experiences and sensations, that I feel so content in the animated world.
My story is like a Bildungsroman. Pages upon pages narrate my psychological evolution from childish naïveté to adult worldliness, all centered around the pivotal moments and people that consequently make me who I am today, and will be in the future. All of my problems, the antagonists of my life, began in my first year starting Andries Hudde Junior High School. Being a vertically challenged, talkative, and atheistic Caucasian boy in a school where the majority of students were West Indian American and Catholic, I was a very easy target for bullying. I was beaten and degraded for not believing in God, for being so talkative, and for being white. On top of all that suffering, my mother developed breast cancer which then metastasized to her lungs, making her unfit to work. Losing her very successful job left an immense financial strain on our family. These events would have emotionally crippled me were it not for the television screen and the animated worlds that I saw inside. For as long as I could remember, I would always sit there, shedding all of my pain and suffering in exchange for laughter and optimism. Seeing my dreams in the daytime made me happier than I ever was before. Animation is everything to me for those reasons.
The animated world is my home away from home. I experience every nuance on-screen as a change in my own life; I live the characters and the plots. Tempests of warmth, optimism, shivers, and tears burst through me when I watch a wonderful piece of animation. When I watch the screen, it helps me forget the sadness of my past experiences and pushes me to live life to the fullest. It has made me into a better person. The animated world is, and always will be, my special place.
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