In the summer before 9th grade, I had an epiphany. I was finally entering high school, where I would  determine what I was going to be for the rest of my life. Where I would be recognized for some hobby or skill that I was amazing at. Right? Every high schooler was known for something; that’s what stereotyped them into groups. Some were intellectual geniuses, who conversed about math and science and rare knowledge.There was also the so-called jocks, who were idiots when it came to school, but they really cared about their sports. And then there was the groups of typical white girls; they always looked like models, and had the most style. I believed they specialized in teenage drama and petty gossiping. And then there were the ones I idolized at age 13; the artists. I perceived them to be shy and quiet; listening to music while sketching in the middle of class, not really caring about notes or any exam they had the next day. They wore nerdy and punk clothing from places like Hot Topic; my favorite style. They always stood out in a crowd, but their manner was humble. And though they never bragged, they had impeccable skills in bringing to life fantastic dragons and unique characters. And I wanted to be like them.
I sat on my over-worn couch in my humid house, watching Hannah Montana on Disney Channel and popping chocolate raisins into my mouth. I glanced at the time; 2:13 PM. I still sat slouched in my pajamas from last night. I pushed another raisin into my mouth, probably surpassing 50 of them. I could feel in the pit of my stomach that I was sickening myself with
them; but I didn’t care, they tasted good. My mind wasn’t on Hannah Montana anymore, my eyes were unfocused and I pictured the time in my head. 2:14 now, and I was wasting it. What do you mean you’re wasting it? The care-free and child-mannered voice said in my head. The ambitious and fearless high schooler voice yelled with disgust, and anger. You’re nobody! You don’t do anything. Head-in-the-clouds voice: It’s summer, I don’t have responsibilities. I’m just doing what I want. Big-dreamer voice: Don’t you want to be good at something? Other than being a LOSER, sitting here and wasting your time watching TV?
In those weeks of the middle of summer, when I had still been a child, with my only obligations being chores and simple schoolwork, it screamed in my head. Loud enough to shake me awake from childhood bliss, and force me to dare and look into a telescope at the future. It told me I was worthless. It told me terrifying things, like I had little time to become the stereotypical artist I had to be. That I had little time before this summer ended, and schoolwork and my social life sucked my time. It told me I was given one life, and right now, I was letting time slip away and doing nothing important. It told me I would die forgotten. But I had time left; I awoke myself while I still had weeks of freedom. I wanted to become an artist, right? So I sat in my office for hours; I journeyed out into the midst of the forest for my inspiration. I sketched anime characters with identical detail. I rendered flowers in pencil from nature in my hand. I even created fantastic fairies and dragons from my mind’s eye. I wanted attention from them, I wanted people to care and praise me and be in awe at my work. I displayed them everywhere I could on the internet. I got likes on Instagram, views on Deviantart, maybe a note or Two on Tumblr. But it wasn’t enough; I wasn’t an artist, I was a lost and unskilled girl re-creating the same things over. Even if I had more ability than the average person, no one really appreciated my work, and that shattered my heart.  What did I draw for, then? They meant as much as an old assignment that I thought I’d worked hard on; I fell in love with my artistry while doing it, but now, it looked basic and recklessly made. I knew that because no one cared about it. Not even I did, anymore.
I still had thoughts in my head; thoughts that were original, undrawn and unspoken in popular media. I wanted to tell people about them; about how I marveled at the beauty of the forest and the nighttime of winter. I wondered about the condition of my generation, and the ones ahead of me. I wanted to describe in resounding detail the feelings I had of determination, of desperate crushes and requited love. I wanted to warn the human race of what the furious voice in my head had shrieked at me a few months ago; to never waste your numbered years, days, and hours. To make yourself as happy as you can, not as comfortable as you can, while you’re alive. I wanted to entrap lost souls in pensiveness with the beautiful and terrifying images I could paint in their minds.
So I set out into my forest and sat down with a notebook and a pencil. I used rhyming and meter, at the most basic level of knowledge. I fused common phrases with my own adjectives to bring brewing fear, nature scenes, and untouched philosophies about the human condition into the consciences of anyone who read it…I hoped. I worked for hours on a single piece, transforming tingling feelings into clever and catchy stanzas. All alone, in the glowing beauty of the forest. I sat for hours, and no thought about anyone approving of it crossed my mind. I wrote of technology sucking away the lives and creativity of children. I wrote about dark winter nights in the same forest, about their wonder and tranquility, because no one else ever saw it. I wrote of inevitable death, about the pain of being alone, about feeling a petty crush to falling in love; words that anyone could feel in their hearts, in my own perceptive poem. But I also detailed my philosophies on the universe and us, things that I figured no one had really considered in their day-to-day human lives that rarely deviated. With these, I hoped to open at least someone’s eyes to the truth.
As the nights came sooner and every day was scorching, I realized with excitement and dread that school was near; and so was cross country. The sweet warm bliss of summer would be thrown out of reach by hard work and stress. I would lose almost all time, all motivation to keep writing my productive poems. I would lose a creative outlet, the thing that put the growling, contemptuous voice in my head to rest, the thing that relaxed me. I knew what I wanted to do for the last month of freedom I had- write a story. I just wanted to try. I slaved over it, drawing diagrams and free-writing almost every detail of the plot line over pages and pages of notebook paper. Back story, character traits, elements of a plot, all spanned out in childish handwriting. I wrote the final paragraph of my masterpiece outline, and it was September. The time buzzer in my head blared, and I dropped my pencil. I never even started. I realized I barely knew how to write my own stories anyway; I would’ve started awfully and then finished with frustration and discontent in my core. But I still wanted to write stories of incredible and alien characters from
different backgrounds, in different worlds. Ones that were like me, ones that were physically and emotionally different. I wanted to paint a heart-pounding, terrifying and tragic picture of their adventures for readers to be captured by. I just needed to be taught how.