Writing was something I was born with. I have been a verbal and literary thinker since I was able to speak, and now at nineteen years old, nothing has changed. The written word has had a profound effect on my growth as a person, going from a fun way to pass the time to my source of solace during heartbreak to my way of expressing myself and my opinions through online articles.

When I was in preschool, I would draw a large picture with space at the bottom, and when I was through, I would ask my teacher to write down the story that went with the picture. She told my family one day I would have my name on a book and I definitely believed her. By the time I hit fourth grade, I was reading books the size of bricks and writing stories based on my dreams. My mom was always my biggest fan, so I trusted her to tell me if the story was any good.

As I got older, wanting to write books was no longer an acceptable lifelong ambition. I put dozens of unfinished stories to rest and clung tighter to the books written by my heroes. I always had this unspoken dream that, one day, I would write a book that moved people the way my favorite books moved me. I wanted the words I wrote to bring the magic back into the world for readers because reading had always done that for me.

When you're a writer/reader, you eventually start building this wall of expectations for your love life based on the pretty words that made your heart flutter in books. Supposedly, only the boys who said all the right things would be able to climb it. I was no exception to this and quickly became a hopeless romantic. To others, I just seemed naive. I was just never able to let go of the ideals my books had built up inside me. Every time a boy said the right things, I was reminded of the happy ending that was supposed to follow, so I would fall hard. High school brought the writer in me out again as a way to cope with the heartbreak that ensued instead, but this time, I was a poet.

Poetry helped me cope with whatever sorrows I was feeling at the time. It also reminded me of the magic behind the written word. Even though they were all laced with sadness and regret, my poetry is very near and dear to my heart, as is all my past writings that I still stumble upon from time to time.

Now that most of my teenage angst (and high school) has passed, I've decided to evolve my writing into a more disciplined skill that I can use to write research papers, literary analyses, and articles like this one. My love for writing has endured the years and help shape who I am, and my style has grown up with me. Who knows, in ten years, I might just have that book with my name on it. Regardless, writing is in my blood, so I know it's going to find its way into my future in one form or another.