Here goes.

Okay, so this is definitely going to sound at least a little lame, but here goes.

It was around New Year's last year. I'd just gone through my first break-up with a guy I really liked (and, well, that came back to haunt me, but that's another story), and I was just sorta having a tough time, because teen drama and angst and all that. It was fun.

So, I was lying awake one night, and I just had a ton on mind. I wanted to vent really bad, but nobody was awake, so I was just on my own to steam and feel awful. I ended up picking up a pad of Discovery Channel-brand note paper and just venting on there to myself. You know, though, you get lazy and you just write fragments and stuff when you're writing on paper, so that's what I did. I got pretty into it. I experimented a little with rhymes and then was all "naw", and I wrote my first poem. It was a basic free verse thing called "My Mistress is Loneliness". It was pretty melodramatic, as younger me was (and present me is), but I was proud of it.

I wrote a few more, and it was a bit easier to sleep then, so I did. The next morning I discovered my first writing community platform: Teen Ink (which I now sort of have a love-hate relationship with). I posted my poems there. They didn't get any fanfare or anything on the site, but I felt really, really proud of myself for putting myself out there.

Suddenly, I started carrying a notebook with me everywhere. I wrote and posted some more stuff, and I even entered a few poetry competitions (which I lost, but again, still fun).

And, well, that was when I figured out that I wanted to be a writer. One thing led to another, and now I'm here. It felt like my whole life just unfolded in front of me after those first few poems. I finally realized what I wanted to do with my life.

Still haven't written anything that good, but I'm getting there. And I'm still content with that.