When I was younger, writing was rewarded. And even when it was absolute **** and it often was, thinking and creating and imaging was worthy in itself and my classrooms were filled with little kids' notebooks and these notebooks were filled with stories and poems and songs. And everyone raised their tiny, sticky hands, bouncing in their seats, hoping to be called on to share the worlds they'd created to the class. And no one ever made you feel bad for wanting to write.
But notebooks and sparkly pens and short stories of imaginary creatures began to disappear as I grew up. I stopped wanting to tell people, to share as I started realizing these words were actually the delicate and unique imprint of my insides and it might break and shatter if I gave it to the world. I started clinging my notebooks to my skin, hot with fear that I would leave them alone to unknown eyes. But no one really wants to read them anyway, no one really knows what to say if I ask, "Can I read you my poem today?" And suddenly exposure is not fun and playful and worthy but awkward and shameful like, "Who are you to think you are so interesting?" I stopped wanting to 'be a writer' because I started to forget what being a writer meant. People said it meant sulking with a jug of black coffee to keep me alive while others went out to work 9 to 5 and began to whisper about me.
But I can't escape being a writer because even when the rewards, the praise are gone, I write. Even when I'm terrified everything on these pages is awful, and it seems the most painful and terrible option to let someone else into this world, I write. Even when I face the truth, that I might not make one penny as a 'writer' (whatever it does mean), I write. Even when writing is hard and its mean to me and it says, 'Go away, I don't want you anymore. Stop trying. Give up. Go home,' I write. Even when I am critiqued, laughed at, rejected, I take those whispers and I turn them into poems, stories, songs and I still write.
And no matter what happens no one can take that from me.
I'm a writer and I'll always be.