I was born in 1994, which means I’m a millennial; a young one, but a millennial nonetheless. I’m in the last group of people who didn’t start using the internet regularly until they were at least in the double digits. Even after my parents became concerned with how much time I was spending on the family computer, it wasn’t literally all I did. I had other hobbies, but being disabled meant they were mostly ones I could do alone, without needing an adult around to help me.
I’ve been a reader since before I knew how to read; my mom and dad read to me and my siblings constantly. They knew my and my sister’s brains would be especially helped by it, but I don’t think they knew how much. I don’t think it stuck for my sister and younger brother as much as it did for me. Reading was something I could do completely independently – I didn’t need help to hold books or turn the pages, so it was a perfect way to keep myself busy since it took so much effort to go outside and play (I did it anyway, but it took a lot more energy for me than for other kids). I loved getting hooked into stories, losing time in the worlds I was reading about, getting attached to characters. One quick example: I read Anne of Green Gables at least twice between the ages of 8 and 10, and I wanted a friendship like Anne and Diana’s. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be them or be their friend more. I wanted to live on Prince Edward Island in a cottage house with big drafty bay windows and woods to explore.
They say readers becoming writers is a natural progression, and for me that turned out to be right. Most of what I wrote when I was younger was scribbled into college ruled notebooks for hours or days at a time and then tossed aside, typed into documents that were saved onto floppy discs and then erased when I lost steam or just forgot about them. I was sure I was going to write a book someday, when I was grown up and doing big things, like teaching or playing professional soccer or dancing or being an artist (I had a vivid imagination as a kid, I still do). I’d find time to write on the side.
I don’t think it really clicked for me until I was in junior high. I was reading more than I ever had before thanks to having to spend my study hall periods in the library and sneaking peeks at the books I carried in my backpack. I was also just a tween with a lot of unresolved and untapped feelings. It made me want to write, and I wrote like mad. I wrote about normal seventh grade stuff, like boys and school and my tiny group of friends. I wrote about how lonely I really was, how I felt like no one understood who I was underneath the quiet, happy face I put on. I was angry a lot, frustrated with feeling like two people at once: the person people expected me to be and the person I felt myself becoming. Every teenager goes through this, but it felt especially difficult for me because my cerebral palsy made everything I did so damn complicated. At that time I felt like it dictated who I was. This writing was messy, painful, and personal. And I swore no one would ever see it.
These books and files eventually got thrown away too, and I went through periods where I didn’t want to write at all. I started keeping notebooks semi-regularly again when I was around 21. I tried keeping a “professional” blog as part of my undergrad thesis project. After all that time only writing papers and factual pieces, I realized something: the best writing I did had pieces of me in it. When I tried to get as far away from myself as I could, it lost something. I stopped caring, ran out of ideas, or just got bored. It didn’t feel like me; it felt like me trying to be someone I wasn’t, putting on a voice that wasn’t mine.
Flipping that switch back on made the words come like water out of a tap. I wrote 200 pages of a novel during the worst of the pandemic - still unfinished, and probably not the best thing I’ve ever done, but it exists now. I have a handful of other ideas floating around on my computer. I’m using my notebooks more freely now; I don’t expect anything I put down to be perfect, but I don’t hate what I’m coming up with. I write essays, poems, I want to try short fiction — I don’t have time to think about working on a novel right now, let alone focus enough to write one. Even what I share here isn’t going to be perfect, because I’m not. I won’t have all the time in the world, because I’m doing this in the small spaces I can find: on the train from my parents’ house into the city, on the bus to work, at the reference desk when it’s quiet. I can comb through something five times, add sentences and paragraphs, and it still won’t be exactly what I want it to be.
To paraphrase a quote from Joan Didion, a writer I idolized when I wanted to be a journalist, I write to tell you who I am. How I feel, why I feel it, what I think, what I think about. I write, I think, because I’m so self aware. I know myself and I know I have things to say. I spent a long time keeping myself to myself, and I think it’s time I let myself be. The alternative is stressful and frustrating. I’m not the smartest person in any room, or the most eloquent, but there are some things only I can say. I see things in a way only I can see them, I have stories I want to tell. So here I am, screaming into the void of the internet and hoping a few people hear me. You don’t have to like it, but I hope it makes you feel something.