Far too often, we misinterpret the meaning behind our own words.
It was in seventh grade when I began to write. It started out simple: a Halloween-themed story for my English class. A girl in my class who I had only talked to once shared a look with me, as if to say, do we really have to? That's lame. I had nodded my head and slunk back down in my seat, listening to my teacher blab on and on and completely in the mindset that I couldn't do any better than what I had always done.
I had never been one for writing; I had never considered myself a writer. I'd written page after page, story after story, plot after plot, and none of it seemed to mean anything to me. I wrote most of my works just to pass the class––but who doesn't? I'd always been a reader––I read more books than any other kid in my kindergarten class––but never, ever a writer. It took me forever to find how words came together to create sentence structure. It took me forever to understand what commas were and where to place them. I knew nothing about the styles of writing––I knew nothing about similes or metaphors, personification or alliteration. Nothing about writing interested me.
But when I sat down to write it with my sister––literally the night before it was due––I felt something inside of me come up and take over my body. Was it an epiphany? A lack of sleep forcing me to write something that I didn't think would even get past a page? Was it just me, hurriedly forcing words onto a page and hoping that my teacher didn't question the way it went around in circles? I had shrugged the feeling away, printed the story, and went to sleep that night without a second thought.
I returned to school two days later (I got sick most of middle school because I would freak out over tests) to find out that I was the only one in the class to have gotten a 100 percent. I got an A. The minute my teacher gave me my story and smiled down at me in what I now know was pride and genuine awe, I was completely dumbfounded. I even went up to her after class and asked her if she made a mistake.
I'll never forget the response she gave me: "You deserve that A."
I can only hope that today, five years later, she's seen how much I've grown and that I am always thankful for her telling me those words. She's what started it all––she was and always will be the one who made me believe that my words were meant to be shared with the world, that I could make a difference if I just wrote and wrote and wrote...
It was in seventh grade when I began to write. I don't ever plan on stopping.
