If you're a writer you can relate to my struggle, and you're more than likely well acquainted with my good friend, Writer's Block. For what feels like this entire quarantine, my mind has been unable to focus on my writing. Whether it be my poetry or my articles, I feel as though I've had to painstakingly pull the words out of my brain and onto my screen. But maybe writer's block is a blessing in disguise.

Everyone's going to laugh at me (because I've been laughed at before for this) but the way I began writing was in my journal. My diary, if you will. Names aside, it was most importantly my form of therapy at the age of 13 when I wasn't sure how to deal with a heartbreak caused by an unrequited crush. From then on I learned a lot about myself through writing in my journal, as it healed me from things I didn't know how to talk about.

I became truly passionate about a future in writing when I was 16. You know that feeling of being in a relationship that you're desperately clinging to but you know has been over for a while? That was me in my first two years of high school insisting I wanted to be a geneticist. I kept trying to find a passion within the field of science that came effortlessly in my English classes. I did everything I could: doubled up in science classes, took science research, and tested for the Biology Olympiad. None of it made me feel the way writing a well-thought-out metaphor did. So, when I decided that I wanted to commit to becoming a writer, I didn't realize that I would be holding a double-edged sword. It's like anything else I suppose, but I'll explain why—at least for me—being a writer is so gratifying but also so infuriatingly trying.

There have been periods where for months on end I'm able to write things I'm in awe of. My creativity is not the sleeping monster I know it as currently, but it is a wildfire and my passion is the tinder. As of today, I haven't felt that fire for a long time. I could blame the quarantine or my lack of inspiration, but what I'm suffering from is something other writers know so well:

Writer's block.

It's not just the inability to come up with something to write, but truly a mental block I put on myself. It's me feeling unmotivated to write because I don't believe in the power of my voice. It's thinking that I'm not good or talented enough. It's convincing myself that it's all been done before so there's no point in trying. I know it sounds like I'm feeling sorry for myself, which sometimes is the case if I'm being honest, but writer's block is the mix of complicated emotions surrounding one's journey to (their definition) of success in regards to their writing. Whether it be someone getting writer's block when trying to create new content for their blog, let out their feelings in their iPhone notes (yes, I do this), or finish that second draft of the third and final novel in their New York Times Best-Selling series—it can be discouraging.

It's also easy to forget that all of these emotions are normal, especially when you're following other poets or authors' journies online and comparing them to your own. I have to remind myself that while I aspire to be like the writers I look up to, that doesn't mean if I'm not where they are at this moment that I'm a failure. In my journey right now, I'm stuck but I'm actively trying to lift myself out of the rut I've gotten myself into. There are days where all I can do is think about writing, I can't quite put the words down. Sometimes all I can get is a paragraph, something insignificant. And that's alright. There's no permanent cure to writer's block, but that's not what's important. What's important is how I'm going to fight through it, because I know the journey I've committed myself to is one with no right answers, no map, or final destination.

So while today might not be the day I write my best-selling novel, there's still tomorrow.