Re-Introduce Myself – pt 2

After I discovered that writing was how I best communicated with others. I was able to get my thoughts out without being distracted. I later realized it was a form of therapy. I’ll get back to that in a second. Like I said before, I’d write my mother poems, and I remember being in a church pageant, while others danced and sang, I wrote a poem about the fall, memorized it, and recited it for the talent part of the pageant. Throughout junior high and high school, I dibbled and dabbled with writing but never shared with any of my friends unless it was a letter I was writing them. Even then I was writing about high school and junior high shit.

It wasn’t until after I graduated that I was all in. My friends at that time found out just because they were being nosy by going through my notebooks and folders, looking for paper so that a game of spades could be played. As the years went on, I was writing more and more. Think about this: growing up from kindergarten to high school, you’re dealing with the same people. Either you went to the same schools or played sports, and some circles connected with other circles, so everyone knows everyone, and you know how to deal with those people. After high school, your life changes because now you’re meeting new people, whether they’re from college, the military, a new state, or a job. How do you deal with these new people? For me, I wrote about it to the point that I learned that writing was now a form of therapy for me. And it was cheap.

I was constantly writing. When my mom introduced me to her friends, she always said, This is my daughter and she’s a writer. She had me write poems for random people I didn’t know. I was writing poems for weddings and anniversaries. I also began to enter contests, some I’d win, and others I came in second or third place. Was I that good? (shoulder shrug) I started doing open mics and sharing my poems with other people, and the poems were starting conversations. Hmm what’s going on here? Could I be on to something? Was there something brewing and I didn’t know it?