In standard fashion of uncovering my favorite things, it took me a winding path of trial and error to unearth my passion for linguistics and metaphors. Writing has not always been my friend, and I countlessly rammed into fury and frustration before committing to my love affair with arranging prose on paper. I often speculate as to when this dreaded enemy had transformed into both my therapist and confidante, comforting me when everything begins to crumble. Yet as I try to isolate the night that writing had officially taken my hand, I become aware that I have loved the art all along. I have loved and exercised it, though masked in a format hardly sharing writing’s fifth cousin in the lineage of creative expression. I have always loved telling stories.  

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             A vivid component of my childhood consisted of impassioned bickering with my father from the back seat of our family car as I presented my case for why I should get to tell a particular story to a guest. These situations often came about when we clashed in our mutual urge to share an adventure we had both experienced. Though he knew I’d likely massacre the punchline and not do an event justice, my developing writer’s heart craved nothing more than to verbally impart an experience as my eyes had seen it. To the chagrin of my irritatingly assertive preteen self, however, I rarely won such an argument. Though I felt robbed of my time to dazzle, simply listening to him speak had planted the seeds for my own growth as a narrator and a writer.

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             I struggled to understand how my dad engaged everyone from coworkers to family members, hanging onto each word and hungry for the next detail. While I begrudgingly crossed my arms and pretended to be unimpressed, however, my subconscious analyzed the secrets of his magic spell. As my dad spoke about unique events, he channeled familiar feelings that any audience could understand and embody. He would describe how the winding Costa Rican roads had been so volatile, they radiated the stress of Manhattan traffic with hardly a fraction of the cars. Central highways were so desolate at dusk, you’d begin questioning whether you hit a closed road and just missed the warning. My mind tossed anchors where it found patterns in sentence structure and tone animation. It developed an unspoken list of rules for choosing just the right details to emphasize and which to gloss over or cut. I slowly cracked his code and was ready to dial it in to obtain an audience of my own.

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             Soon enough, I caught myself bringing these skills into practice and became enamored with the game of twisting sentences in ways I felt texturized my ideas. It was when I realized I can translate my stories into tangible works of writing that I began stretching the practice to unexplored capacities. How I wrote shaped how I spoke, and how I spoke directly became what I put on paper – improving one of these skills piggybacked off the other. As the vast majority of my words had been printed for no one but myself – and even still I caught myself getting self-conscious – I used the medium to find catharsis and beauty in my daily frustrations.

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             While I continue to emphasize storytelling in both my life and my work, I use words to further unpack meaning while reflecting on experiences. I write to disassemble the inside of my mind and confront the hollows my brain tries so hard to hide from me. Sometimes all this does is appease my anxiety, but the prophecies I stumble upon and package with my own vocal signature make the process deeply personal and rewarding. Though I struggle to award myself the title of a writer, my words will always hold the power of shaping how I’m known and how I will be remembered. I want this legacy to be tangible – for my sentences to transform chaos into lessons lined with adjectives felt in the fingertips.