My Story

My alarm is ringing. I reach over and grab my phone off the nightstand to turn it off. Rolling onto my back, I stare up at my ceiling. A ceiling I know so well after years of laying in this very spot, studying the minute details above me as a way of escaping the thoughts in my head. I pick up my phone again and squint as the dazzling light from the screen hits my eyes. I check my email and Instagram feed to see what the world has been doing while I’ve been asleep, but find nothing more exciting than my neighbor’s post of her new manicure and an email advertising a sale at a store I bought something at once.

Checking the time I see it’s already 8:30. I close my eyes again. I could pull the covers up over my head and let myself drift out of consciousness. Wake up at 2:30 in the afternoon feeling like I have a hangover from oversleeping, stay in sweatpants and binge eat all day. It would be no different than what I’ve done the past five months.

But I had promised myself today would be different. Today would be the day I turned things around.

I rummage in the back of my closet for a few minutes before I find my workout clothes, which look brand new even though I bought them two years ago when I swore I would practice yoga everyday. Trading in pajamas for yoga pants, I pull my hair back into a ponytail. I’m not used to having my hair this short, it was below my elbows before I had chopped it all off a few months earlier. I woke up one day and all of a sudden it felt like it was weighing me down, and so I had grabbed my scissors from the kitchen and cut it to fall just above my shoulders. It was a choppy mess, but I always wear it up anyways.

I lace up the running shoes I had previously worn only when running errands and start out for a jog. As I run, I go over, for the hundredth time, the direction my life had taken.

 I had let myself fall into a rut. My life consisted of working to make enough money to pay my bills and spending my free time on the couch eating. I knew I needed more than that.

The first step had been to start reading again. I had picked an old favorite that I had read many times before so that I knew it would be familiar and comforting, like the well remembered aroma of fresh baked cookies. I had been happy to discover that I still loved reading. Over the past few years I had assembled a pile of books that I meant to read eventually. Now I found myself diving into them hungrily. Most of the reading I had done since before high school had been for assignments or educational purposes. This was the first time in a long time that I was reading purely for the love of it, with no other motive in mind besides enjoyment.

As I made my way through book after book, reading about so many engaging characters, ones I could relate to but also ones who opened my eyes to different ideas and new perspectives, I began to form an idea that, try as I did at first, I couldn’t escape; I needed to write.

I needed to write about the hopeful young girl who had been full of dreams and had taken for granted that she would fulfill them simply because that was what was expected of her. How university had been nothing she had anticipated, how gradually over time she had started skipping more and more classes until she was missing more than she was attending, until she finally dropped out.

How she had been plagued by worries about what people would think of her. She could hear them saying to each other, “She had so much potential.” They would shake their heads and shrug their shoulders and move on to someone who was successful.

I needed to write about how as soon as she  started university things she had been out of place. It felt as if everyone had been given state of the art GPS systems, while she was equipped with an out of date map and broken compass. No matter how many hours she spent with her textbooks and notes, she couldn’t make the schoolwork make sense. She had set out with high standards and expectations for herself, and she quickly learned she was failing to meet them. This was the girl I needed to write about.

I feel myself tiring but push myself to keep running, imagining that as I run I am clearing the thick fog from my head so that I will be able to think clearly.

After my run I take a hot shower, feel the warmth from the water relaxing my sore muscles, imagine the steam cleansing my mind.

I put on my most comfortable pair of jeans and a hoodie. I leave my hair down. After brewing myself a strong cup of coffee, I walk over to my desk. I had spent the afternoon yesterday tidying it so that today I find it organized and clean, waiting for me to begin my project.

Even though it takes longer and is more work, I have always preferred writing with pencil and paper before typing it on my laptop. I find it easier to concentrate. I have always had this idea that the words flow smoothly from my brain, through my arm and the pencil, finally taking form on the page.

I sit at my desk, the paper in front of me, close my eyes for a moment and take a few deep breaths to settle myself. It’s time to begin.

I had spent the last few weeks imagining this moment, sometimes with longing and impatience to begin, other times with dread, feeling overwhelmed as if I was taking on an impossible task.

Writing was something the old me had done. I had always loved reading and begun writing my own stories at a young age. I had excelled in English and creative writing classes in high school and had always put extra effort and care into any writing assignments. I had been proud of my work and was excited to enter a world of people who shared this enthusiasm for literature when I started university. It didn’t take long for me to realize that while at high school writing may have been my thing, here it was everyone’s thing, and several of them were a great deal more talented than I could ever hope to be. It was discouraging, and as the months passed by, I became more and more disinterested in my work. I no longer took pride in my writing, it was something I dreaded doing because no matter how much time I spent on it, I could never get it to be good enough. Every assignment I submitted came back laced with criticisms and suggestions for improvement, but I felt that what I was trying to say through my writing wasn’t being understood. Writing was my voice, and I felt it wasn’t being heard.

So I left school. I moved back home. I got a part time job and tried to figure out what was next for me. I saw writing as something that other people do, people who can weave meaning and emotion into simple every day words and have readers feel exactly what they are feeling, picture vividly whatever they are describing, understand what they are saying.

The truth is, I was afraid to face my failure, afraid to acknowledge my emotions and to admit my weaknesses and mistakes. But I finally realized that to truly move forward, I would have to face them head on.

It was no longer about trying to prove myself, to show my skills, or to get the grades. Now I realized I wanted writing to be about putting down thoughts and emotions, feelings, and trusting that someone out there would understand. What had once been a source of anxiety and despair was now my source of purpose and hope. Just as nothing worth anything comes easy, writing is not easy, and yet, when I fully give myself over to it, I lose myself in something magical, something that brings me total and complete peace. I didn’t know if I could do it, but I knew I could try.

Once I began, my hand could barely keep up with the words flowing from my mind in an endless stream. One thought followed another, word after word forming sentence after sentence. Before I was finished with one paragraph a new one was already forming in my head. There wasn’t room for anything else, nothing else mattered but getting the words from my head out onto the paper. I didn’t worry about spelling or grammar, I just needed to put down my ideas.

As I lay my head on the pillow that night, my thoughts were filled with new story ideas, characters’ names and plot twists and bits and fragments of paragraphs and chapters. For the first time in ages I fell asleep not worrying and replaying over my past, but looking with optimism and hope towards the next chapter of my story.