Hello, Dearest Readers,
Here is something I wrote for my college English class, which I thought you might like to read. It is the story (in essay format) of how I learned to read and write. (It's pretty long, so kudos to you if you read the whole thing)
I remember learning to read when I was four. It was
an incredibly early age to start down a road so complex, but I couldn’t wait
any longer. I had had enough of staring at the magic lines on the paper, the
lines that somehow turned into the words and stories that my mother read to me,
deep in the living room couch that she had upholstered herself. There was magic
to them, like a box on your birthday that you know houses a delightful
surprise. Though it was hard to keep my attention on anything at that age,
learning how to read kept me quietly occupied for hours at a time. As I grew
older, I realized that this early start had taught me far more than words and
letters: I understood the intricate meanings and abstractions behind them. This
is how my journey of words really began, leading me to ascend a staircase of
ever greater literary heights throughout the stages of my childhood and
adolescence.
By first grade, I realized that something was wrong.
My hours and hours of reading children’s novels and dissecting the words and
phrases in songs on long road trips were fueling something that I didn’t have.
It felt like there was water pouring out in front of me, but I had nothing to
catch it with. Finally, one day, I came across a name in a book. That name
captivated me, and I repeated it to myself, over and over, until unconsciously,
a person formed around that name. A woman, practically a goddess, who was
worthy of that glorious name. I decided a few days later that earth was too
common a perch for my brainchild, so I created a new world for her, naming it
with another name stolen from my beloved books.
I was overjoyed to find what was missing from my
creative process, and instantly began flexing my imagination. I would watch an
interesting movie, or read a good book, and then hit rewind in my mind and
insert my character somewhere early in the storyline, and then imagine how the
story would change. Through this, I learned plot, story writing, series of
events, protagonists and antagonists, climax and finish. Eventually, I came
across one online comic that I couldn’t leave. Usually, after finishing out the
new storyline in my head, I would leave it behind and start a new one, but this
comic, and especially the four main characters, stayed with me for years. I had
already mastered storylines and understanding how characters would react in any
given situation, but as I began to mature and change, my new characters, as
well as my original character, began to grow with me. Through the awkward stage
of puberty, I learned character development, and along the way, added four new
companions to my mental wanderings.
After writing down short stories of my character’s
doings for so long, I grew tired of them. I still loved my characters, of
course, but I didn’t enjoy the writing anymore. I couldn’t stand the rules,
didn’t want to follow all of the niceties of narrative writing. One day, I
finally sat down, grabbed a notebook, and just wrote. Ignoring all the rules, I
found myself pouring out words, phrases, and all of my thoughts in a torrent
that alleviated my need for rule breaking. The result was a beautiful form of
prose that painted an abstract picture in my mind. I consider this to be one of
the greatest achievements of my literary career, and it is still one of my most
beloved forms of self-expression.
High school was a period of pain and discovery for
me. I became an outcast in my private charter school, spending lunch in the
library to avoid the humiliation of having to eat alone. I had no friends, and
eventually, my mother, who was my main rock of consolation, was swept up in
legal battles with the school, leaving her with no time for me. I was
incredibly alone, and I turned to the poems of Edgar Allen Poe, which swept me
into a whirlwind of depression. I began cutting myself, leaving long, bloody
marks on my arms that I later had nightmares about. Through this time, I
learned poetry, expressing my despair through long, demented poems. Eventually,
my mother pulled me out of that school, and when I had recovered, I renounced
my poetry, keeping only one poem from that time. Now, I rarely write poetry,
since that kind of writing was is now tainted with unhappy memories, like water
stained with ink.
In my sophomore year of high school, I decided to
start a blog. I knew it would never become a very popular or well-read blog,
but I definitely had ideas and writings that I wanted to share with the outside
world. I started it in May of 2010, and steadily posted my abstract writings,
updates on my life, and occasionally pictures and videos that I found
interesting. As I was part of no sort of social media, it became a way for me
to give people ideas and my own opinions. It was a good way to teach myself how
to present my writings to the internet or to people, in general. Through that
blog, I learned that it was okay to share my thoughts over the internet, and to
put a piece of my mind, like a thumbprint, upon the web.
When I turned sixteen, I began to write a book. My
characters and ideas that had lived for so long in my head had now matured
enough for me to write a full-scale novel. However, an unlucky Irish temper
that had been inherited by me now raised its head. Twice, I deleted my
half-finished novel in fits of rage, and once more, locked it in a word
document and forgot the password. However, I once more began to write, helped
along in the process by National Novel Writing Month, a challenge to write
50,000 words during the month of November. I managed to write 45,000 words, and
finished my book a few months later, at around 60,000 words, when I was
seventeen. I never published it, but I fully intend to in a few years. It
remains my masterpiece, a wonderful monument to my willpower and imagination.
Looking back, one can see how the stages of my life
affected my literacy. As I began fine-tuning motor skills and learning how to
speak fluently, I also began to read and expand my vocabulary. First grade led
me to discover children’s novels, which in turn inspired my own epic literary
creations. The awkward ages of puberty taught me character development, and my
teenage rebellion years helped me find a kind of self-expression that helped me
deal with my unruliness. A time of confusion, sorrow, and loneliness helped me
to discover poetry, and my need for online social interaction turned into a
blog where I could post all my thoughts and writings. As I prepared to become
an adult, I began to settle down and find my stride in long term writing though
writing a book that would take persistence and stamina throughout the years.
Adulthood taught me willpower and endurance. Reading has never deserted me
throughout all of these stages, but has acted as a stepping stone to reach the
next level of writing proficiency. I was not always a great writer, but as time
passed, my hours of reading and imperfect writings has led me to a level of
mastery and excellence in writing that even my tremendous imagination could not
possibly have imagined.
