There were seven years in my primary education where I lost who I was. Seven years that made me feel as if I was inadequate at doing what I was passionate about. Seven years that I lost my voice and gained a lifetime of insecurity. Growing up, I was constantly writing stories. I would take anything and turn it into a whole world. I loved immersing myself into my imagination and allowing it to take me wherever I would allow. All throughout elementary school, I was blessed enough to have teachers who nurtured this love of mine and encouraged me to never stop. They made me feel as if I had a talent and my writing was worth something.

It wasn't until 6th grade when I began to believe that they all could've been wrong. I had a teacher who told me that my writing was "too long" and that I "really just needed to get my point across and be done with it." I began to do just that. Year after year the creativity of writing was being phased out of my English classes. All of a sudden, I wasn't being told to use the different types of writing with a creative prompt, I was being told to analyze what the color of the walls symbolized in somebody else's writing. My writing scores continued to drop and although I was in the highest level English classes, I felt as if my writing was inadequate. I believed that any talent I might have had was not a part of me anymore. I no longer wrote for the sheer pleasure of doing something I loved. Quite frankly, I quit writing altogether.

Now that I am older, I realized that I never truly stopped. The funny thing about me is that no matter what I do, I will always be a writer even if it is never shared. I never stopped constantly making up stories in my head. To this day, I narrate situations and am constantly writing or thinking of ideas in my head. I will grow up eventually and begin a career path in life that will not require creative writing and I'm sure there will be a time when I no longer have the pleasure of writing for Odyssey. A true writer will write if only for the joy of themselves.

I'll never be the same little girl who wrote stories and had absolutely no doubt that they were nothing short of amazing. I'll always stress about my Odyssey article each week and worry that it isn't perfect and maybe all of those who made my writing feel worthless were right. I'll always write out my life in a notebook so that somehow I will be able to make sense of things. Writing is not what was taught to me for seven years. Writing is not eliminating your own voice to purely write about another authors voice. For seven years, I lost my voice; however, now that I have it back, I know that I will never lose it again. I will always be a writer even if only for myself.