If you flip through my elementary school yearbook, there is a series of pages with photos of each fifth grade graduate lined up in neat boxes. Under the photos, there are a few fun facts about each student; one being what they want to be when they grow up. While most of my peers aspired to be an astronaut or a lawyer, I had a different passion that I pursued throughout elementary school. When you land on my box, you will find an eleven year old girl in a bright purple sweater with the caption: “I want to be an author when I grow up”.
On one of the first Christmases I can remember, I recall tearing open a gift from Santa to find a “make your own book” kit. Little did I know that this very kit would be the catalyst for my aspirations to be an author. The kit contained sheets of paper and markers to write and illustrate a story. That very day, I wrote and illustrated my first book: “Family Trip to the Zoo”. The story describes a family of four taking a trip to the zoo, the main character being my aunt Keara. I submitted the writing and illustrations, and in a few short weeks I received a hardcover version of my story. Over the course of my elementary school years, I wrote and illustrated a total of five books; which you can still find tucked in my bookshelf at home. My aunt holds the title of favorite relative, and I devoted four out of five of my stories to her – one being more centrally focused on her daughter. Aunt Keara has her own copies of each book, and would encourage me to write a sequel after receiving each new story.
As the years passed through middle school and into high school, my books collected dust on my shelf. My passion for reading and writing slowly faded into the background, as school and basketball took hold of my focus. It wasn’t until my first heartbreak that sparked up my passion for writing once again. My first break-up occurring in my junior year of high school snuck up behind me and knocked me out. In the midst of the messy ending, I sobbed for weeks on end; physically unable to eat, sleep, or function. I desperately needed closure, which he was unwilling to provide. I sent him paragraph after paragraph, with no response in return. I realized my desperation was only pushing him further away, and that I needed to find closure on my own. In a moment of hopelessness, I resorted to journaling. Every time I wanted to text, call, or reach out, I would write everything I wanted to say to him in my journal. Flipping through my journal entries is the epitome of an emotional rollercoaster. One entry will be beautifully written, reminiscing on how “perfect” our relationship was and how I would do just about anything to get him back, while the next entry would be written in all capital letters about how horrible he treated me and made me feel. No matter how tempted I was to send him these entries, I held my ground and kept them to myself. The more I wrote, the better I felt. Eventually, I no longer depended on my journal or felt suffocated by the urge to reach out. We broke up at the beginning of May of my junior year, and my last entry was July 21st. The irony of it all is that a few months later, he reached out to me begging for me back and apologizing for everything he put me through. Unfortunately for him, by then I had moved on and soon after met someone new. Healing is a process, and without utilizing writing as an outlet, I am unsure as to whether or not I would have made it through.
Starting that very summer (the summer of my breakup), my mom hired me to tutor my younger brothers in English. She paid me twenty dollars an hour and posed the tutoring sessions as distractions from my emotional distress. While I grew up with a natural passion for reading and writing, my brothers struggled with finding the same motivation. I created lesson plans consisting of basic reading comprehension, grammar, and writing. Conducting these lessons contorted my vision as a writer, due to the fact that I had the lens of an instructor rather than a student. Creating the lesson plans and teaching my brothers led me to plunge further into the details of the language, and fine tune my own writing in the process. I used samples from my own writing in the lessons, which proved to be beneficial for both my brothers and me. The process gave me awareness of the hidden errors in my writing: teaching grammar resulted in a closer analysis of my own. While my tutoring days are over, I learned a lot from taking the role of teacher and improved my writing as a result.
If someone were to now ask me “what do you want to be when you grow up?”, I would most definitely have a different answer than my fifth grade self. My answer today would probably be a PA (physician’s assistant), but who knows what the answer will be a year from now. Regardless of what my final decision will be, I am almost certain that writing will be a key aspect of any job I wish to pursue. The ability to communicate, whether it is through writing, speaking, or through visuals, is a universal necessity. My growth in writing throughout adolescence, while it may appear to be insignificant, will prove to be important in the grand scheme of life.
