The Lonely Writer

This is mostly just a rambling entry about how writing got me through the worst years of my life. If you're looking for advice or great words-of-wisdom entry, please hit the page down button twice and you'll be redirected.

I started writing when I was young because I didn't have any friends. Thanks to my dad, we moved around a lot and it was difficult to maintain friendships. After a while I didn't see the point in trying to make friends at all because I was just going to move away from them in a few months anyway. By the time middle school came along I was socially inept. As a result, I was bullied mercilessly to the point where I seriously and frequently considered killing myself. Life was hard and I didn't understand why everyone else had it so much easier than me.

My teachers seemed to know that something was going on and advised me to meet with a counselor. Per her suggestion, I very resentfully started keeping a journal.  I wrote about boys who would never like me the way I liked them and girls who I wanted so badly to be. After a while, though, I realized how incredibly pathetic my existence was and started a journal as someone else.

The character I created started out perfect. Happy, popular, attractive and rich. I relished in the fictional existence for maybe three entries before growing bored. Perfection, I discovered, was boring. I started weaving in problems for my character, only little things at first to make their lives more interesting.

Life became more bearable. It was a downhill slope from there.

I carried the journal with me everywhere, writing in it during class, lunch and recess. It was my only outlet for a long time. I created more characters and with those characters came more problems and more possibilities and so, so much more than my own world could offer. I finished my first full length novel (which I now realize was excessively/embarrassingly longer than a standard novel) at 14.

All at once, the downhill slope dropped out from underneath me. The free-fall began.

I don't know when exactly the transformation started, but suddenly that creative, witty and damn confident person I became when I was writing was strutting around campus. I was still far from being the HBIC, but I finally was able to be me and not give a flying flip about what anyone else thought. I said what I wanted, did what I wanted and wore what I wanted. The best part of all? I loved who I was. The less I cared, the more friends I made.

Sure, you could blame puberty for the changes that happened during that time, but I know it was all thanks to writing. It worked me out of my shell. It was a safe haven where nobody could judge me. It was what I could always rely on no matter where my family moved or what sort of hell I went through there. Without it I wouldn't have made it through what so many call "the best years of our lives"--the years which almost killed me.

There you go. Rambling complete.

Moral of the story #1: Don't pick on that girl just because she's different. One day she's going to be a fierce, fine, femme fatale rocking the world off it's axis and hell bent on revenge.

Moral of the story #2: If you are that girl, hang in there. It gets better and the revenge you get on them down the line will be oh so sweet.