🌹The Reintroduction🌹

It would be a disservice to fifth-grade me to say that I just woke up one day and decided to be an author. I spent most of my childhood dreaming of writing something worthy of study, something that would live inside a curriculum, underlined in pencil, whispered about between pages.

I grew up surrounded by language. Encyclopedias, dictionaries, and thesauruses were never far from reach. My maternal grandmother, a grade-school teacher, took “reading, writing, and arithmetic” as gospel. Summers meant reading programs, handwriting practice, and an unspoken lesson: words are sacred, and the ability to use them is a privilege. I was taught never to take for granted the literal blood, sweat, and tears shed for the art of literature. The art I was born free to explore.

Every August, I’d get giddy over school-supply shopping, begging for extra composition notebooks. They weren’t for classwork; they were gardens. Ground for the soil and seeds of stories I couldn’t wait to grow. My first completed notebook, Temptations Are Knocking, was a 200-page green-covered love triangle written in wide-ruled lines. From there, I found community in Yahoo Groups, where I wrote fan fiction about celebrities, tear-jerking dramas, and stories inspired by my favorite songs. Later came Microsoft Word documents and a box of floppy disks gifted from my grandmother’s classroom stash. Slowly, I built muscle memory for storytelling. In all the ways that wouldn’t get me in trouble.

I used to roam the Scholastic Book Fairs, dreaming of the day my own title would sit on those shelves. My favorite pastime was convincing my mom to take me to Waldenbooks, where the kind lady behind the counter let me scan my membership card and choose a new bookmark. I loved reading and writing so much that my mom once used it as discipline: “If you don’t straighten up in that math class, you won’t be going to any library, bookstore, or book fair.” Believe me, I straightened up. I played Accelerated Reader against myself and earned enough Pizza Hut rewards to be on a first-name basis with the cashier.

And now, here I am. In just a few weeks, I’ll be a published author. My stories, once scribbled in green notebooks, will be bound and ready for the world to explore. I’m rediscovering the love that shaped my childhood and taught me how to find joy in reflection. They say we make time for what we love. For a while, I stopped making time for mine, but God, I’m grateful I found my way back.

With Cream, I wanted to test my faith in myself. To see if I was truly ready to commit to writing the first of many works I’d have the courage to share. I’ve released self-sabotage back to its sender (including anyone who ever tried to convince me that I couldn’t).