3. Writing to feel

     I'm a writer. I've been a writer for as long as I can remember. I read at an early age, and developed a love for writing at an early age as well. I remember when I was five and just learning to write, I used to describe everything with such immense detail. You could give me a leaf, and I'd spend an hour detailing the lines and the colour just so I could get the description perfect on paper. I thought every last detail was important.
     When I was in third grade, I started to write short stories. I loved super heroes, but none of them were girls. I made my own. I wrote about the adventures of my female super heroes, and how they saved the world and beat the villains, then came home right in time to tuck their children into bed. I was eight years old, and I promised myself then that I would never write a love story because they were dumb and only fantasy. I could write about super heroes, but in my childish mind love was too far-fetched.
     When I entered fifth grade, I developed a love for poetry. I loved writing what I wanted to write without really saying it. Here enters my love of detail again. I always had a thesaurus out, trying to find prettier ways of saying things because some words just sound so plain. I didn't want blue eyes, I wanted eyes the colour of the ocean as it was just coming out of it's winter slumber. In fifth grade, I learned that the world wasn't so perfect as it had always seemed. My mind wasn't so childish anymore. I experienced pain, and it changed me as it changed my writing. I wrote from the depths of my soul, and produced writing that was so immature yet so full of sadness it could only come from a child in pain. It was vulnerable because that's what I was then.
     In the middle of sixth grade, I moved to Lowell. I had been living in the same house and going to the same school with the same kids until then. It was a new environment and a totally new system of social conduct that I hadn't quite learned to conform to. I had pale skin and rosy cheeks and blond curls that I hadn't yet learned to control. I cried every day because I couldn't understand why these kids were so mean to me. They weren't like my old friends. It was a different kind of life in the city and I didn't know how to handle it then. So I wrote. I wrote every day about everything, and writing helped me to see the world as beautiful again.
     I hit another rough patch in high school. I was fifteen and thought I knew the world, but I was so wrong. I couldn't have imagined that then. I was angry at nothing and everything at the same time, and I stopped writing because it was all a reminder of the girl I used to be. I was desperately trying to run from that girl for reasons still unknown. I picked up my pen again one day, and I revived her. I found my strength again as soon as pen hit paper. I swear it's the most empowering thing.
    I always have people ask me why I write. It's a difficult question with no satisfying answer. But I don't write for nothing. I don't write to shock people, and I don't write to impress anyone. I don't write to please people. I write because I want to. I write because I need to. I write to feel.

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