Writing, It's just who I am

      “I am participating in the ‘Writing Contest: You Are A Writer’ held by Positive Writer.” When asked when I realized I was a writer I stopped and thought about how I came to this realization and how writing saved my life.

     When I was little I loved telling my younger sisters funny stories I would make up. As I got older I started collecting composition notebooks. I almost always had one of these well used and slightly abused notebooks with me. My parents, friends and teachers would find me writing the crazy stories from my head onto paper at any free moment. I loved writing and it inspired me to be creative. However, all good things must come to an end. As I got older my parents, especially my Dad tried to push me away from writing my silly little stories, saying as a writer I was never going to amount to much. I was so discouraged I stopped writing almost completely. Despite my teachers telling me I was a talented writer and should write more often.

     I still had all of my stories in my head, I just had no drive to write them. Hard times came in my life, my baby brother was still born; my best friend moved away and decided she hated me; I lost hope in my life. I sank into depression between my eight and freshmen year of school. I didn't know what to do or how to come to terms with my feelings. There were times I even wanted to end my life.

     Sitting alone in the dark, one night I was considering how much my life really meant to anyone around me. The girl who use to be my best friend had told me I was nothing but a selfish stuck up jerk, and that the world would be much better off without me. I sat there listing to songs asking the question “Would it matter if I wasn't here tomorrow, would anyone care?” The longer I listened, the more I re-read her hateful texts, the more I started to agree with her, I was pointless and meaningless and hopeless.

Sitting there, thinking the world was against me, and the world hated me; I realized something. I still had my writing. It had always been there for me in the past, and if I got over what I had been told about how I would never amount to anything with writing and let the words flow; then my writing would still be there for me.

I picked up my old laptop and just started to type, I let my feelings my emotions, my tears, everything flow out through my fingers and onto that old laptop. I sat there sobbing while I wrote. I ended up falling asleep on my laptop that night. When I woke up in the morning the words were still there on my dimly lit screen. I looked at them and read them, realizing that if I let go and wrote my words, my writing could be my escape. I knew right then and there, that my writing had saved my life.

     When I wrote, I escaped. Looking back, if I hadn't turned to writing I probably would have killed myself or done something else that I would have regretted for the rest of my life. As I started writing more, I realized my writing could help people. That I wasn't the only one in a dark place feeling alone in the world. If writing had saved me maybe it could save someone else too, but even if it couldn't maybe reading my writing, and understanding my struggles could save them. Maybe, like me, they would realize that they aren't and never will be alone, someone cares. Someone always cares. There's always another way out. Sitting there that morning, reading back what I had written I realized, I was a writer. I would always be a writer. What others thought didn't matter anymore, because writing was who I was. I knew, the words, the emotions, writing was in my blood, and it was who I was meant to be.