5-13-2010




I was about fourteen years old when I wrote my first piece. It was a letter to my mom apologizing for not being the daughter that she needed me to be; for not living up to her expectations; for disappointing her time after time with my unfortunate unforeseen disarray of teenage drama. It was a letter apologizing to my brother for not being there for him when he needed me most; for not being around to pick him up from school or to help him with his homework. It was a letter to my boyfriend apologizing for having left him too fast too soon. It was a letter to my teachers apologizing for not completing my homework assignments or participating in class. It was a letter to myself apologizing for not loving me enough; for not respecting me enough; for not being strong enough to handle the perils that life had thrown my way. It was a suicide note that I had written to myself in second period English. A note that was never meant to see the outside of that classroom because I was too chicken shit to follow through. I balled up the note and, absent mindedly, tossed it in the trash as I exited Sister Mary Catherine's class. Moments later, I realized that ending my life was a dastardly way out of handling the complications my teenaged soul faced. I needed another means of self expression. I needed to create something. Something meaningful. Something that I had hoped would one day touch someone else's life and pull them back from the ledge of utter self destruction. So I wrote! Every chance I got I wrote. Poetry, letters, short stories, journals. I wrote.

One would think that after all of these years of writing to myself about myself, I'd be exhausted of such indirect self-absorption, but I'm not. At 32 I continue to use my writing as a creative medium of self expression. Inspired by passion, anger, beauty, love, life, writing is my outlet, to say the very least.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the suicide note that I so cleverly discarded. Well Sister Mary Catherine just so happened to be digging in the trash, I suppose out of sheer boredom, and somehow retrieved my lovely note. The next day I was pulled into my guidance counselor's office and later had to endure a horrifying three visits to the shrink of my dreams. I just blamed it all on the absence of my father and wrote about it later.