The Magic Of Words.

I started writing when I was fourteen years old. My then–best friend was always writing poetry, and she inspired me, so I gave it a shot.

Or let me rephrase that.

I started writing seriously when I met her.

Up until I started high school, I was simply writing the cliché, rhyming lines about my first crush, as I’m sure we all did at one point. But with her as a friend, I learned so much — including the fact that poems don’t have to rhyme. Though my work back then was still very obviously written by a fourteen-year-old, I felt better because I had started branching out and stopped making everything rhyme. I was branching out into other subjects apart from my crush and more into topics about the world outside the walls of school.

It didn’t take long for me to really feel like I found what I was meant to do. Looking back on it now, I wish I would have taken it more seriously and really dedicated myself to it, but I’m just thankful that I fell in love with writing in the first place.

I went from cliché poetry about first crushes, to poetry about myself and the world around me, and then I ventured into short stories. From short stories I went to fanfiction.

Wattpad was so big for me, and writing fanfiction not only helped me with writing in general, but also with my poetry. Poetry was the one thing I always came back to, and the romance parts of any fanfiction I wrote inspired future poems.

I can think back on middle school and high school and all the students who hated writing. At one point, I did as well. But I look back on my writing journey and I realize how much it has not just helped me, but truly saved me. It became a safe place in a world that seemed so chaotic and out of my comfort zone.

It allowed me to create my own comfort zone.

Through the years, as social media grew, I was able to read poetry, short stories, and fanfiction from people all over the world, and it helped me see just how much writing can bond people.

Social media helped me realize just how magical not only writing is, but the people who pour their hearts into whatever they write.

And through my love of writing, I have not only met different parts of myself, but two of my best friends. In my fanfiction days, I met two people who have changed my life completely. They commented on my stories, and from there we developed a friendship that is still so strong. I’m thankful for Wattpad for not only allowing me to read the words of others, but allowing me to meet my two very best friends.

Words are a bridge to different places, times, and people, and even though words can also be dynamite to that bridge, I believe there are more good words out there than anything — just as I believe there are more good people than bad.

I’ll write blog posts, Facebook posts, simple stories on Wattpad, but at the end of the day, my heart goes back to poetry.

To the old folders I had when I was eleven, stuffed to the brim with rhyming words about my very first crush.

To the journals with my messy handwriting, filled with poems I had to get out of my head.

To the diary that I wrote in through all the good times and the bad.

To the present, where it has allowed me a safe haven in expressing my grief.

Words are scribbled all over my heart from things that have been said to me, whether they were kind or mean, and through them I was able to push through and continue on a journey that I started years ago.

So writing is far more than just putting words down.

It’s building a bridge to other lives.

It’s a time machine to the past.

It’s hope and dreams for the future.

As Albus Dumbledore said, “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”

To the girl who introduced me to writing — I hope life has treated you kindly. I hope you are in the place in life that you have always wanted to be. Although we have taken different paths in this life, I am very thankful for the time we spent traveling together, no matter how it ended. The memory of our friendship lives on with everything I write. I will forever be thankful for you and the time we had together.