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Dear world,
When I was twelve, my mother peeked her head into my bedroom every morning, telling me it was time to wake up. Instead, I tugged the blanket high enough to cover the tears that welled in my eyes at the thought of going to school.
When I was thirteen, I spent five days a week sitting in a classroom that was supposed to teach me how to write an essay. Instead, I learned how to cover up my tears with a yawn, or that my best friends weren't the best, nor my friends.
When I was fourteen, I stepped foot in my high school for the first time and stared at the blue lockers that were too bright, the people too tall and their voices too loud. Four years, I told myself. Four years and this'll all be over, too.
When I was fifteen, the girls in my grade blossomed with confidence. They straightened their hair and walked with their chins pointed upwards, tugged to the sky, while I struggled to speak without my hands shaking.
When I was sixteen, my beautiful friends were busy planning parties, buying frilly dresses and stealing their mother's makeup while I hid in between the four walls of my bedroom, reading books about the lives my friends lived. A life I wished I could live, too.
It was only when I turned seventeen that I realized I was lost. As my friends gushed about their love for sports, boys and art, my lips remained sealed as I wished for something, anything, to make my eyes shine as bright as theirs.
When I was eighteen, the haunting What are you doing after high school? question took up every conversation I had. The people around me seemed to care more about my future than I did. Like my future didn't belong to me, but was a tale I had to spin to impress those that leaned forward with eager ears.
I was eighteen when it first dawned on me that I didn't have any dreams.
But when I was nineteen, I began to write. And it was only then that I found a home in the space between where the words left my mind and filled the pages. I had spent so long searching; searching for the thing that made my heart race; searching for the thing that made my eyes bright.
When I was nineteen, I stopped searching.
Now, I am twenty and I am a writer. I choose to spend my time creating fictional worlds that allow people a chance to escape, the same way I once needed to. But unlike my twelve-year-old self, I no longer hide behind the covers or the walls of my bedroom.
Now, I have found my place in the happiness felt by those that read my stories. Now, I think back to the pain that felt permanent and realize that it was temporary.
I found happiness through writing. And you deserve to find yours, too.
