There are moments before I write when the possibility of writing looming over my head, that I am not sure why I write. These are usually moments full of chaos and devoid of time. On those days, I ask myself why I can’t just be a normal person who experiences life, enjoys it, lives in the moment, and forgets about the details.

But I am sort of that person, too. I am that person, and then I am the person who notices things, patterns, emotions and I really want to sort those things out on paper because my brain is just too cluttered to make sense of it all. Why do painters paint? Why do singers feel compelled to transform words or sound into melody and rhythms?

When done well, all of these activities can capture the pulse of life in a tangible, lasting way. In sharing that emotion, or story, we connect to other humans. And that connection reaches beyond time and place. Even if it is not done well, writing can release the writer of feelings and ideas that refuse to stop bouncing around inside of them. Perhaps therapy would take less time and effort, but at least writing is free.

I am the second daughter, the middle child. I grew up the younger sister of an actual model and the older sister of an actual high school football star. Our parents were attractive and moderately successful. They certainly were capable of projecting a nearly perfect American middle-class life. I frequently felt like the odd man out; I’ve always had trouble with maintaining great illusions.

I was chubby, with frizzy brown hair, and a hatred of running. I liked to read and daydream. It was exhausting to try to look and act like something other than exactly who I was. When I was seven or eight, I remember my sister and brother making fun of me following my elation over receiving books as a Christmas present. I was curled up in my Dad’s oversized Hunter-green recliner, and they taunted me, “You’re going to marry a dorky guy who wears glasses!”

(It turns out my husband does wear glasses and loves to read, too. But he didn’t wear glasses when we met. So does that count?)

I think my seven-or-eight-year-old self-yelled back some sort of denial until our parents stepped in. But I also remember thinking, “I’d rather marry a million dorks with glasses than one idiot who doesn’t like to read.” Twenty-something years later, I still love the written word, and thankfully, my siblings have come around to it more in their adult years.

Being different, or at least being acutely aware of that difference, has a big impact on a kid. It made me try to figure out why or how I was different, and how and why the other “regular” people behaved as they did. In many ways, being a little different from my immediate family resulted in my keeping a lot of feelings and thoughts internal.

It’s rough to have the people you love not get whatever crazy idea with which your young brain is obsessed. I often turned to journals. Partially-filled journals are the mascot of my childhood. Looking back through a few of them as an adult, I’ve come to realize I may have been a pretty average kid. But those journals made me feel like I had a voice. And that voice was louder than any insecurities and those pages were free from judgment.

I don’t know if I’ll ever write anything extraordinary, but I think I’ll always write. Writing is one activity where I can sit with a pen and notebook, or at my computer and be completely and deliciously lost in the words coming out of my brain.

Time is irrelevant when I write. As an adult, writing has helped me break away from an unattainable perfection I had been chasing since childhood; it has helped me break free, word-by-word, from inauthenticity in my life.

It has helped me through the terrifying and wonderful changes of becoming a wife, a mother, of losing a beloved great-grandmother, of going back to school, of discovering my individual and unique self-worth.

For that reason, and many more, I will continue to write.