how writing got its claws in me
I don’t remember the first thing I ever wrote, but I remember the first time it felt like something real. I was a kid sitting on the floor with a notebook I stole from a school supply closet (sorry to whoever had to reorder those). The paper smelled like dust and cardboard, and the pen barely worked unless I pressed down so hard the letters carved grooves through the page.
But it was the first time the noise in my brain actually went somewhere. Like, every thought finally had a door it could run through instead of ricocheting around in my head all day.
I didn’t think “oh, writing is my calling” or any dramatic chosen-one moment. It was more like an accidental coping mechanism that stuck. The way some people pick up nail-biting or energy drinks. I picked up stories.
For a long time I didn’t show anything to anyone. I wrote in margins, on backs of worksheets, in the notes app that was one cracked screen away from deleting everything forever. Half the time the stories made no sense. They weren’t good. They weren’t even readable. But they made me feel like I could breathe.
And then life hit. The real stuff. The stuff you don’t talk about outside a group chat with one trusted friend and maybe your cat. And I kept writing because it was the only place I could say things without flinching. Not even as myself, usually through characters who didn’t exist, who could take the fall for feelings I didn’t want to claim yet.
Somewhere along the way, it became less about escape and more about… construction. Like building rooms in my head where I could actually live. I wasn’t trying to run away anymore. I was trying to understand.
At some point I started sharing pieces online, thinking maybe three people would read them. And then somehow a little circle formed, people who also hoard stories, who also overthink sentence structure at 2AM, who also have that twitchy urge to write something down before it slips away.
I don’t know when it shifted from “this is my weird hobby” to “this is how I exist in the world,” but it did. Writing is the place I go to make sense of things, or break them, or rebuild them, or at least pretend I know what I’m doing for a few minutes.
And if you’re here reading this, chances are writing grabbed you too. Maybe gently. Maybe by the throat. (Both are valid.)
Either way, welcome. Pull up a chair. We’re all trying to figure it out.
