Anon

I should write this down. He said that to himself leaving the school bus, not too happy about the home he was headed for. Up the steps and in the door, he passed the man slumped over the couch, looking at him through cloudy eyes and foggy glasses. What was he doing all day? You could never tell with fathers, uncles, cousins.

Fresh on my mind and flooding my wrist, I went to work on my first few stories, only having the base idea without knowing where I was headed. A story starter, not a story finisher. You see, writing, this type of writing, was something I did for fun, once upon a time. Right now? When I'm depressed, it feels like an obligation, a task that I must do to solidify that I can indeed write. The prospect of it being a skill, expression, and activity all come to me now with the head loaming over the rest. He's been trying to answer that question when he wanted to write stories again, to become an author or something like that. Why? It was something to do at one-point, now? It's an identity I've created for myself. I am a writer. Writing is what I do. Often I look forward to what I'll write so much I forget the point of doing it. And sometimes I get so envious the enjoyment and love leaves the pen. That bittersweetness, when you show it off to someone weighs on you, but you only recall the negative reactions. The biases and thoughtfulness around it.

At that time, he didn't know why he wrote and didn't bother to ask. Now, he has a time where he writes, works, sleeps, and eats--ironically--with more time to jot. Writing let's his overwhelming thoughts and insecurities quell, turning that overthinking to deep introspection, making challenges less challenging. Reading was his first love, listening was innate. When the two intersected, the story became the reason he wrote. Detangled one by one, his flaws and strengths came to surface, a method for replying in his writing since he had few he would talk to. To him he is a writer, or to frame it accurately, writing was inevitable.

He smiled into the notebook paper, reading it over in his head then out-loud. It didn't turn out how he thought it would, so he left notes and lines all over it; it was time to start over.