I fear I might’ve gotten too emotional with annotating a short story assignment

The more I think about, the more I feel guilty about making a few comments.

So I had this assignment where I have to read a few short stories and annotate it with comments, questions, etc.

The most recent assignment was called “Madwoman” by and it was about a dysfunctional family. A single woman raising her biracial child and holding some resentment against his ex husband but also heartbroken about him abandoning them and often blames herself for losing him for the sake of her son.

I kinda of had to skim through that short story and made three comments as assigned, because halfway through I was getting upset. This one felt like it should’ve had a trigger warning because I grew up in a dysfunctional household. I know my mom faced a similar issue with my dad and I know the comments I made might’ve been personal but I had to write something for the grade.

I’m a bit afraid to look at any of the feedback from my peers because it might be arguments and constructive criticism. I read some of my other peers comments about halfway through the story, and they always were against the women’s point of view before reaching the end of the story which they started to change their opinions. That kind of burnt me up because reading the first like three pages, I could see from a mile away how misunderstood the mother is. Just reading the immediate comments from the earlier pages of that story I can tell how everyone quickly assumes the protagonist is the bad guy. Just like when people hear gossip on the street about other people’s dysfunctional relationships, they want to pick a side to stand on.

I can’t go back and delete anything once it’s posted after the deadline. I feel like I could’ve picked quotes to comment on that was plain and simple but I went for the ones that sort of stood out and triggered me a bit.

What really got me was the parts of how the husband blamed the wife just as much as the mother blamed herself. It just pissed me tf off because it reminded me so much of my mom.

It’s so difficult trying not to blame anyone which is why I often want to steer away from topics like this assignment but I really needed the grade.

Lowkey I don’t even like this class anymore because we keep getting short stories that provoke a lot of tough and dark topics. I’ve already gotten points off from my last essay for using AI (yes I know it’s wrong, I shouldn’t have done it) but I felt the need to do it because I really didn’t wanna talk about some of the topics relating to the stories that I felt I might be too personal. I notice I have a habit with English classes that I tend to plagiarize and cheat on writing when it’s topics I don’t wanna talk about. I actually have written decent papers in my own when it’s themes that seem relatively simple. But when it’s referencing books and stories that are too dark and complex, I feel the need to cheat cuz it’s too frustrating to think about.

I don’t wanna think about tragic stuff. And don’t wanna analyze it. I swear as much as I love reading, I think English classes in academics make me lose interest in reading. This is why I didn’t want to major in English and prefer to read leisurely.