A Reflection: One Day I (Maybe) Became a Writer

I think it’s weird how different writing is now. I wish I remember how exactly I started, but I think it’s one of those things that just happened. One day I put pencil to paper and, eventually, fingers to a keyboard, and just poured my heart out. Every thought, feeling, emotion…everything.

One day I became a writer.

I loved every second of it. I truly felt like I found a calling of sorts, something that would not only help me grow as a person, but explore, decipher, and overcome the happenings of day to day life.

I recall that I began writing around the time I was eleven or twelve. That’s when I discovered fan fiction for the first time—for my absolute obsession of a series—and I can truly say it changed my life for the better, but in ways I never could have predicted. Initially my stories were very much akin to the fan fiction genre, with characters and plot elements staying largely in canon with the published storyline. But eventually, as I grew up and my stories matured with me, the fan fiction itself became less and less about the characters and the world it existed in and much more about my own personal experiences.

I exploded.

Every emotion I had—specifically every heartbreak—came to life through words that I ripped out of my beating, bleeding heart. How amazing is that? I recall being fascinated by my ability to put feelings into words, and remain so to this day. Especially now in this renewed endeavor to begin writing again. I can’t believe the phrasing of words that my brain can create and my fingers can dictate. How is such a thing possible? How is it that I have so much to say?

And how on earth can I be so damn inspiring?

I don’t mean that I’m going to inspire a generation of individuals in any specific way. All I’m saying is that I look back at some of the things I’ve written and I’m amazed at the awareness, authenticity, and poignancy that exists with some of what I’ve put to paper. I have inspired myself, and that is a strange enigma to come to terms with.

Being a creator is a constant cycle of amazement and questioning—how did I get here, sure, but how can I expect this to be meaningful to anyone other than myself?

What the hell did I do to be able to commit such a feat as a preteen when I can’t even figure out how to express myself now in my near thirties?

I think that’s also part of what needs to be addressed as I attempt to connect my now self with the one who I am still so encouraged by today. How do I find inspiration in the day to day norm that exists today as a now married woman in a happy and healthy relationship? What is there to write about if there isn’t pain and heartbreak and confusion?

Some of the greatest things I ever created came from a mind that was pure chaos. Someone who had no idea what the bigger picture was, but instead wrote from a place of subjective despair, trauma, and loneliness.

I’m just trying to come to terms with what it means to be a writer and to feel validation and pride as a creator. I want so badly to begin again but I don’t know how to find the spark that once ignited and didn’t die out until life caught up with me and complacency (not unwelcome, of course) became to regular part of life.