Have you ever been somewhere as a child and as you grow older, you forget you were ever there but somehow stumbled upon that same place years later as a grown adult? That's how I feel as I make my way back to Odyssey Online. Memories of my college year of hoping that I'd make some revenue off my articles on "long-distance relationships" and "my finals-week playlist" flood back to my mind like an old movie reel, and I see myself in my old sophomore-year off-campus apartment (just a few miles away from where I live now as a newlywed) as I will soon embark on one of the roughest years of my collegiate life. I see my 19-year old self sitting at her desk typing purposeless words, unknowingly about to lose both her first love and her grandmother who was like a mother to her. As the playback reel fast forwards, I watch the younger version of myself hit rock bottom, voluntarily escaping reality by hotboxing her mini-van, The Luna Odyssey, when she almost earned her title of the "first college drop-out in the Fu family legacy", and the rest of what was left of this little girl's sanity was lost over to the demon of grief and two years of recreational drug addiction. The articles I posted in 2015 for my now alma mater, Penn State, serve as a diary entry now, a timeless remembrance of what life was like before it spiraled out of my control. I certainly am not in that same stage of life and since then, I can only hope I've grown as a writer and also, as a human being.
I've contemplated elaborating more on my story in this post, but have decided instead to write a book on how I was rescued from the hellhole I was in. It's a riveting storyline, full of good and bad spiritual experiences and some plot twists where the princess meets the prince then (ironically) finds out neither one of them lived in a fairytale, but I obviously can't get into it so soon into my new writing epic journey. But until my book gets published, you're left with this-- the epilogue of my old story, and a new chapter to come.
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Here I am, 25 years old young, a newlywed wife of faith, a part-time grad student studying IR (international relations & global studies) online at Northeastern University, and a full-time creative mind looking for new ways to branch out and share parts of that with the world around me. So that brings me to you, full circling back to where I first sought a place to write but didn't have many life experiences to take a full swing. I can't say I'm not grateful to have a portfolio to encounter some of my former writings, but I'm ready for a fresh start. To what's ahead and all there is to come!
