Catharsis...

Okay, wow; it has been a while since I've had a chance to just sit at a keyboard and type my heart away! 

I've just come out of an hour-long type-fest (yes; I know that's just pitiful 😂) and the feeling I got as my brain cooled off... Holy Crap! The catharsis was so visceral it was just... Unbelievable!

It was also nostalgic as hell because it took me back to the my early days as an aspiring author...

My first true foray into the world of writing (no, I don't count the very first drabbles I put down because I was just groping in the dark back then) kicked off with my book, E.L.I.T.E.S, commencement date: September 7th 2007. Back then, I'd just come out of a serious WITCH phase (you really should read WITCH if you haven't) so, for about three years after that, all my book titles were acronyms of the major characters but that's just an aside; the important thing to note here is that back then, I wasn't exactly the happiest kid on the block.

No, scratch that: I was on the brink of depression back then. I was picked on near-daily by a very specific group of kids and I heard it all: from how I had the b.o of a dead cow to how I looked as bloated as one and a host of other nasty digs. It was even worse because I was born with something of a birth defect which just gave them even more ammo. Looking back, now, I can honestly say many of those issues should not have gotten me down but to 10- & 11-year old me? I wanted to die. And my stupid, independent-ass self just wouldn't ever allow me to tell anyone! 

So, as the good old savagery got worse from my classmates, I sank deeper and deeper into reading, often locking myself up in the school library to just read swathes through the books we had on the shelves. It wasn't enough, though: the anger, frustration, helplessness... The hate... It just kept building and building and looking back, I am so very glad that things turned out as they did because, had I gone the other way, I'd be a completely different person, one that I'd be afraid of.

On August 4th 2006, I watched a TV show about kids and art. There was a lot of impressive stuff up there -from papier mache geniuses to musical maestros to one young girl who made a sculpture thingy with bottles- but what really caught me were the words of a young writer. He said,

Writing allows me to be whatever I want to be; to go anywhere in the world and to express myself in ways I can't in the real world.

No one had ever talked about writing like this to me; heck outside of writing essays in class, I'd never written anything. The idea that I could express myself however I wanted... It seemed too good to be true so the first thing I did was to grab a pencil and a pen and try to write something.

Yeah, no: it didn't work out and I tossed the paper aside in disgust.

Back to reading and watching TV.

However, 6 months down the line, I kinda just... I grabbed some writing materials, sat down and just wrote about how I wanted my life to be. I must have written close to 500 words in that sitting (an insane feat for 10-year old me) and while I didn't feel that euphoric hit that I mentioned at the beginning of this write-up, I did feel less... burdened.

I won't burden you with the many stories of that 'baby-steps' period; just know that it was filled with starts, stops, learnings and the occasional bouts of annoyance/frustration.

Finally, after more than a year since I'd heard that young man's words, I had an idea I felt I could work with. So, I sat at my table with a pen and an old notebook in hand and I got to work.

Four hours, and nearly 2 thousand words, later, I had finally found it: an outlet. A way to let out all that negativity that was building inside me.

Catharsis.

And I've been writing ever since...