How Messy is it? The road back to writing...

I come from a family where presentation is everything. You should look a certain way and act a certain way and live a certain way or else there will be blood. (Okay, maybe not blood, but you get the idea.) I've finally come to terms with the fact that I can't do that. I don't know many people who can thrive within boundaries given to them by someone else.

One of the many pieces of my life that I compromised over the years was writing. I wanted to be a writer, or more specifically a real writer, someone who would be published. I started to write poetry when I was in fifth grade and had some poems printed in a local paper. I branched out in to short stories and more detailed poetry (that didn't have to rhyme) as I grew older and passed through my high school years.

I had an opportunity in high school to be part of a career explorers' group that focused on journalism writing. They met about an hour from my home. The chosen few were grouped together to work on material for a much larger daily paper. My parents said, "No, it's too far away and a waste of time." End of story.

Then college beckoned, which is a saga in itself, and away I went. I was told that in no way would I be allowed to have a major that had anything to do with writing. It wasn't the type of career that would ever bring me money. It wasn't a good enough career. They weren't paying for me to learn more about the one thing that I had loved and sustained me for years during a rough adolescence.

I went to college and I dutifully did as told. I majored in International Affairs and minored in Spanish and History. I went to a wonderful college, one that you've probably never heard of but it was wonderful anyway, called Sweet Briar College in Virginia. I did exactly what I was supposed to do, for the most part.

In four years I never took an English class as I had tested out of Freshman English.

I took two creative writing classes in four years. They were probably the best classes of my life because I was able to do what I loved most. I wrote and shared with my classmates (anonymously, the beauty of it all) my writing and received feedback from them and my professors.

As a matter of fact, I have this bulletin board hanging on my apartment wall that contains sundry items that are special to me. One of these items comes from my college years, a hand-written note from a professor. It's dated 5/23/90.

"Your best pieces were the last two - "The Softball Game" and "My Daddy". You have talent & I hope you'll continue to write."

Two sentences from a man who no doubt has long forgotten me. Two sentences that have been hanging on that board for eighteen years. Two sentences that make me think that I can do this thing that I was told not to do many years before.

Eighteen years later I started to write, for me.