I use to hate writing…& then I became a writer.

I use to loath writing in all of its forms. Essays for class, messages inside of greeting cards, & even the very tweets about my trivial life in 160 characters or less.

I never saw the point, if I’m being completely honest. I never thought I needed to put to paper what I had in my head. But here’s the thing… eventually my headspace got overwhelmingly crowded & I realized that jotting things down was a great way to alleviate some of the stress.

When I was diagnosed with anxiety I wasn’t sure how to cope. It felt like the constant chaos inside of my noggin was there to stay. Worrying about what I needed to get done, remembering to buy milk, making sure I knew the formula for the math test…suppressing all of my feelings about all the craziness of life in general.

I turned to reading to help cope with my anxiety. I found comfort in the words of others, especially when they were able to articulate how I was feeling. This came up in passing with my therapist, and she asked the million dollar question: “Why don’t you try to write?”

No, I thought to myself. I could never write as eloquently as the authors & poets I admired. And with my anxiety hovering above me, I was certain that my writing would be rubbish, so there was no point in trying.

But then I started writing.

Not for anyone else, but for myself. It began with to-do lists, then branched into ramblings of whatever I wanted, & eventually evolved into poetry, prose, & my favorite on-going project, 6 Word Stories.

I soon gathered the courage to share some of my writing with others. It wasn’t easy, & I don’t think it ever gets easier. Writers often pour themselves into their work, revealing parts of themselves that they rarely share with others. I was afraid that I was opening myself up to judgement.

But I think that’s the real job of a writer, to say things genuinely regardless of how it makes people feel, & most importantly, how it makes the writer feel. One of my English professors last semester once said that “Writing requires pain. To be a writer one must have experienced quite a bit of sorrow.”

And so, here I am, once a teenager who hated writing, now a sophomore English major who writes all the time. I’ve won awards for my writing, I’ve been told I’m good at writing, & I enjoy writing.

What I have learned in discovering that I am a writer is that there is so much of myself that I am unaware of about, but the words in my heart already seem to know it all.