Say Yes to My Story!

One Long Yes!

There are a lot of chances to say no. I mean it. There are A LOT.  In some cases, no is kind of mandatory. Say no to drugs. Say no to underage drinking. Say no to that creepy stranger in a van offering you candies. Then there are the chances to say yes. Say yes to your crush when he asks you to prom. Say yes to that scholarship to your top college choice.  Say yes to that pretzel that you totally earned by babysitting your friend who was recovering from surgery. Some chances aren’t as cut and dried as the examples I threw out there. In fact, some of them may not even be offered to you. I didn’t get asked to prom by my crush and no creepy stranger in a van offered me candies. I didn’t get a scholarship to my top choice school (although I did get a scholarship.) But I did say no to drugs and alcohol and I totally ate that pretzel. But I’m not here to talk about all of those missed opportunities to make a defining decision in my life. I’m here to talk about the opportunity that did change my life.

I wish it was ONE moment that defined this opportunity. It was multiple moments in my life that gave me plenty of chances to back out. It started when I was young. I was five and I was in kindergarten. Let me lay out the major events that plagued my first year of school: I got glasses, I was tested for a learning disability, and my grandfather died of lung cancer. The glasses I handled well and I still do. I rock these things. My grandfather’s death completely confused me and I hated it. I still cry sometimes. I didn’t get along with my classmates and I wasn’t expressing myself in class as often as was deemed healthy.  My learning disability actually turned out to be less of a disability and more of an ability. My IQ was significantly higher than my counterparts and I was separated and put into a special class with other kids like me. My first assignment in this new class was a writing assignment. I didn’t know how to write. I knew my ABCs and I knew how to spell my name and a few more words. Ok, a lot more words. My teacher gave us the choice: write a story or draw a picture. Well my artistic ability was subpar and I knew it. It still is. I draw stick figures and they’re crooked. CROOKED.  So I made the choice. I chose to write a story and it was awful. It was about a rabbit that lost its mother because of a poison carrot. I completely ripped off Snow White without the happy ending. But it was a story: it was less than one page and it was depressing. Turns out it was pretty good considering a five year old child wrote it. When my teacher asked me if I liked to write, I said the god honest truth: “Hells yeah.” Only I said it without the hells and I’m pretty sure I didn’t say yeah. I said “Yes ma’am.”  But the point is I said yes. So in my file, for all of my current and future teachers to read, it was recommended I be given writing assignments to help me express myself better in class. And it worked. I became more social and I even had my own special notebook filled with all of the adventures I went on. It was great.

Fast forward to middle school and here is where I found out that differences can make or break your social standing. Turns out writing isn’t a really popular hobby and it didn’t help I wore glasses. I was still too smart. I’m not going to lie: I was bullied. Not over the top bullying, but it was there. But I still wrote. In fact, I wrote story that was almost a hundred pages and I was so proud of myself. Full of pride, I let one of my friends borrow it so they could read it. Well as it turns out, my ‘friend’ didn’t keep the story to himself. He passed it around my entire grade. By Christmas of sixth grade, every kid in my grade had read my private story. Hell, there were actually a few seventh and eighth graders that read it too. When I found out, I was devastated. I fully expected to be tormented or worse, get in trouble. I was constantly worried that one of these kids was going to get caught reading this story and the teacher was going to take away and I would never see this masterpiece again. I didn’t have a computer because back then because what kid had their own computer? Not me. So this story was written on close to a hundred pages of lined notebook paper in pencil, pen, gel pen, whatever writing utensil I could get my hand on. But I did get it back. After Christmas, my friend returned my story to me and only had one question: Did I write it? I said yes. After that, every kid that had read my story asked me if I had indeed written this story and every time I said yes, they would grin and tell me how good they thought it was. There were eighth graders stopping me in the halls or at lunch asking me how I got so good at writing. This was a big thing to an awkward pre-pubescent nerd. People knew my name and it wasn’t because I stabbed myself in the arm to prove a point and it wasn’t because I had peed myself in gym class. Both of these things honestly happened to two separate kids in my school. Throughout middle school, every time a writing assignment was handed out, I was asked to help. I won two county-wide poetry contests and a Veteran’s Day contest. By the time I reached high school, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to write.

High school didn’t go as smoothly. I moved three times. I was less social and I didn’t let anyone read my stories except on occasion my sister. No one knew about my dreams to be an author except my grandmother and my best friend. My stories got longer and more complicated. I finally got my own computer.  I wrote hundreds of stories. Most, I never finished. I was a junior in high school before someone even bothered to ask me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I knew I wanted to go to college. I loved school and learning. I just didn’t like all of the other people involved. When I voiced my desire to be an author, I was immediately shot down. I was constantly told I wouldn’t make any money as a writer and that I wasn’t going to be the next Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. And let’s be honest, I knew I was never going to be on the same level as them. People just kept telling me NO. One day, while browsing for scholarships, I found a writing contest for a state scholarship. The best story won a few hundred bucks. A few hundred bucks can buy you one or two semesters worth of books! So I entered. Turns out, I won. I didn’t brag about it.

I decided to go to an affordable college by using my inheritance to pay for it. When my parents asked how I could afford my first and second semester’s worth of textbooks without dipping in my college fund, I told them it was a scholarship for writers. When they asked if I won, I proudly said YES. It took me a little while to build up the confidence to say yes when people ask me about my stories or if I’m sure about what I want to do with my life. Yes, I want to write. Sure it doesn’t have to be my only job. That’s why I changed my major from Creative Writing to History with an education and English minor. If need be, I will be a teacher who encourages kids to chase that one hobby that makes them irrevocably happy. That’s my YES moment. It was almost a lifetime of owning up and saying yes this is what I want and what I love to do. Hopefully I get to do it for the rest of my life because it makes me so happy and it also makes me so incredibly proud of myself. 

Say YES to what makes you happy. You'll never regret it. Unless its drugs. Don't say yes to drugs.