Falling in love made me a writer

I never considered myself as a writer. I wanted to be one. I always dreamt of being a journalist or writing a book but I couldn't finish anything that I started. I guess a lot of people have that issue. Mine was the fact that I didn't feel like I had anything important to say. I felt like anything I wrote was absolutely stupid and childish and I didn't think there was anyone who'd like to read my stuff so at some point I just stopped writing.

From time to time I'd try to write something but every single time I ended up realizing that probably there was no one interested in what I had to say. For over 4 years I didn't touch a pen and had no need to write about anything. Well, that's not true. I wanted to write, I just couldn't find anything to write about. For a person who talks all the time I felt voiceless. I felt like there was no way of me putting my thoughts on paper and making something out of it. I felt so frustrated with having nothing to say. Until HE came along.

Don't ask me how this guy from Tinder with really bad pick-up lines stole my heart but before I knew it I was absolutely and deeply in love and after 10 months engaged. I didn't really notice how my life was changing since we started dating but I definitely became more creative than usual. I kept on having those crazy creativity spurs when I'd write a silly song about him just because I didn't know how to express my feelings. Then along with my best friend I created a website and started writing about my travels. He opened a whole new world to me and I just felt that insane need to share it with others. Still, my posts were not getting that much attention outside of my friends and family and after all, it was just a website. I didn't feel like being a writer, more like one of those girls who create a blog for a while and then they forget about it. I really didn't want to be one of those girls.

Then I became something else. Something much worse. I became an immigrant. As soon as we got married I lost all of my rights or privileges in the USA and I had to figure out what to do with a year of no legal right to work. Realizing that I was officially unemployed and couldn't even apply for a job was one of the worst feelings I have ever had to face. I felt embarrassed, like I didn't deserve my husband because I couldn't support us. Everyday I was very close to dropping everything and going back to Europe because I knew there was not that much to drop anyway. Somehow my husband was the only thing I had left and I hated that feeling. I hated being dependable and treated like something worse than a human by the immigration system. I couldn't apply for a legal job, neither get my driving license, not even get into a local community college. I felt like I found myself in my own personal hell and I hated everything about it.

I wasn't only sad or frustrated. I was MAD. I was seriously mad at the whole world, the whole system that made me feel like less of a human just because I fell in love and wanted to stay in the same country as my husband.

It took me less than a week of unemployment before I couldn't take it anymore and I submitted a book proposal to some random online self-publisher. They called me the next day and said they would publish my book for $1000. Praying that it wasn't a scam, I took the deal and started writing a book. I spent countless hours in local Starbucks while my husband was working across the street and surprisingly, 3 months later I published it.

If you ask me it's not such a great book. I think I rushed through it and definitely should've spent more time editing it. Still, it is a book. It's my book that I wrote and published. I'm a published author. I'm an indie author too. To be able to say that...? I couldn't be more proud of myself and yet that's not the end of the story. It's only the beginning.

"Green Card Marriage" was my way of getting my voice back. After spending over a year living with a toxic host family and losing all my civil rights just because I married the love of my life I needed some place to let all those emotions out. And I did. To be honest I'm shocked every time I hear people telling me they loved reading my story and I can't believe that I let them into my life just like that. Just this week someone reached out to me and thanked me for sharing my experiences with the world and it made me realize that I achieved that one thing I always wanted to. I got to a person who was completely not related or connected to me in any way and she liked my book. That was the only goal I had and I did it. I DID IT.

As I said, "Green Card Marriage" was only the beginning. After getting my voice back I started writing more and more: blog posts for my website, signed up for Vocal and even started a college so daily essays became a thing. I realized I had a lot to say and as long as I always get this one person that doesn't know me but still reads it... that's all what it takes, that's my goal.

Since I was a child I knew I wanted to be an artist but I couldn't draw, I couldn't sign to save my life and don't get me started on dancing. I loved performing on stage and writing some little poems but the older I got the more lost I felt. At some point I got completely detached from my creative side. Falling in love with HIM didn't really make me a writer but it gave me a spark to awoken my inner creator. Everything that our love came with, the crying and the frustration... my host family turning on me and me becoming an immigrant... all those good crazy moments that still make me smile... all of that gave me endless inspiration that I needed to start writing. I had to write a whole book about how I hated being an immigrant in order to realize that without that I might have never become the writer I was meant to be. And that would be a great loss. Not for the world, I'm not that arrogant. It would be a great loss for me.

I had to lose my voice completely in order to become what I am today. To become loud and clear. To become the writer I always wanted to be.