Some writers have an extremely inspirational backstory on becoming a writer. A story of how they endured an amazing, life-changing circumstance and how it took them through a tear-jerking journey, inevitably leading them to the wonderful world of writing.

My story is nothing like that.

I started writing because no one was around to listen.

I’ve never had many people in my life that I trusted. Especially after moving during middle school. I never really fit in or made any real friends. They had all known each other their whole lives, and I just wasn’t one of them.

I still went to my hometown church, but that wasn’t much different. I might’ve known them my whole life, but I was still never one of them. I didn’t play softball, I didn’t do dance team, I didn’t go tanning, and I didn’t live down the street. I never really had anything to add to their conversations, and half the time, I didn’t even know what they were talking about.

I was out-spoken no matter where I went. So I stopped trying to speak.

The amusing part is hearing people tell me they thought I was “stuck-up” because I was always quiet. It made me realize that the people who silenced me didn’t know what they were doing.

At a young age, I turned to journaling. I wrote down what I felt, what I saw, what I did, who I liked... it was a way to get it out of my system (before Twitter was a thing). For a short time in high school, I did take a break from writing; but come to find out, humans are not the best secret keepers.

I returned to my journaling. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do, but it was pretty much all I knew by that point. It’s not like I had anyone else to turn to. I found it to be true that the quietest people have the loudest thoughts.

After high school, I got tired of journaling. My college life wasn’t anything I wanted to write about. That’s when the stories started.

I found freedom in my creative writing. I was still expressing my thoughts and feelings but in the forms of poetry and short stories and screenplays. I could change the names, add different details, and no one would know that the story was true.

It’s amazingly easy to let others read your work when you get to pretend it’s not happening to you.