Without going into the nitty-gritty, it’s been a hard couple of months for me. In many ways, I feel like I’m back to where I started a few weeks ago. Nothing major or substantial has changed in my surroundings. The leaves are still falling, It’s still getting dark way too early, I’m still finding it almost impossible to drag myself out to exercise, and the talk of Corona is still buzzing in the air like a persistent fly. But the past few weeks have been transformative for me, in quietly significant and monumental ways that not many people will understand. And that’s ok, because it was a personal journey.

Life can work in mysterious ways. It gave me a chance to gather my thoughts and recharge. And in that space, I discovered a few things about myself that had been lying dormant. I realised I wanted to pursue my writing more than anything else. As someone with many different creative interests, it’s never been an easy route. But in some way or another, I’ve been writing my entire life.

I still have books I wrote and illustrated when I was six or seven, stapled together pages, written in curly primitive script, and illustrated just as primitively, with my older sister’s handwriting editing over my spelling mistakes. The two most memorable were: “When will I have a good day?” And, “If only, if only, if only.” Judging by these titles, it seems I had a miserable childhood, but in reality, these books were a pretty accurate representation of the things a six year old cared about.

Something about these cut out pages and love heart illustrations was so innocent and pure, it made me want to hold onto them. Flicking through the worn but still vibrantly coloured pages as an adult still feels like grasping for simpler times, back to when the biggest challenge I had was wanting to go on more rides at the amusement park.

The 90’s passed, and as a teenager, I wrote poetry like it was going out of style, pages and pages of it, scrawled messily at all hours of the day and night. Lots of angsty teenage stuff, scribbled down whenever the mood struck. Some of it made sense, some of it, not as much. I kept journals too, decorated the covers with collages and filled in the pages nightly. Even when I took breaks, writing has sustained me, creating an outlet that was equally as creative as it was necessary.

All beginnings start with endings.

You see, there has never been a real ending here. Just a few pauses along the way. Pauses, bumps, bruises, and a few more. No one gets out of life unscathed, I know I didn’t. But I hope to be able to deliver my version of reality in as honest a way I can. I write for selfish reasons mostly, because it makes me feel better, and it provides an outlet to get stuff off my chest and organised into words. But I hope one day to be able to help other people through my writing, too. If that ever happens, and I end up helping even one other person, my entire journey would be worth it, hands down.

Welcome to the ride.