A goodbye to @infiniteflame

It’s funny. I probably shouldn’t even be posting this. But I think it’s time to move on.

This is the username that I first created when I joined Prose almost four years ago. I was a freshmen in highschool who had the biggest dreams of publishing a novel. I’d never thought to write poetry. Not once before this site. Poetry was the boring thing teachers made us do in class.

It wasn’t till my best friend and co-writer of the time, let’s call her Penny, shoved a phone in my face at lunch and started gushing about Prose. It was the perfect opportunity to branch into something new. A whole new style of writing that neither of us had ever done before.

I think this site played a key role in our friendship. Which is why when we had the argument that would end it, I stopped writing. I couldn’t lift a pencil or open a document to write without her face coming into view. I gave it all up because of her.

I didn’t log back into Prose till about two years later, towards the end of my Junior year. I was stressed and didn’t have any other release. Prose gave me that opportunity to bleed my emotions out in writing.

And now, as a senior in highschool, I don’t really write to get others to read my work anymore. I don’t seek praise or really care if others understand my words. I just write whatever comes to mind, whether it be a poem akin to disjointed thoughts or a rambling such as this one, I know that I’m writing things out for me.

And somehow this stage seems to be the final one of my journey on Prose. No, I’m not leaving but I’m not staying either.

I’ve changed as a person and a lot of the people who I connected with when I first started this site no longer write or post any longer. And that’s okay too. I get it. Life is busy. Life is hard.

I think @infiniteflame was a username that symbolized a lot of my past, particularly my highschool experiences. From the effort I put to giving my username a personal meaning to the fact that I made it alongside my ex-best friend in ninth grade, @infiniteflame holds a lot of meaning to me.

But this chapter is coming to a close. I’m no longer hiding behind pennames or hiding the fact that I write. I don’t obsess over novels anymore or have the time to write something I don’t want to.

My name is Shruti Pandey and I’m ready to move on. Maybe I didn’t need to make a such a long and dramatic post about my username and past but I’m dramatic person and it seems like what I want to do. So here it is. A new chapter. A new life.

Let’s do this.