Writing My Way Out

If you ever get the chance to sit and talk with me, the first thing you’ll notice is just how much I move my hands when I’m talking. I joke that my hands are just angry that words are coming out of my mouth instead of from my hands, so they feel the need to include themselves since writing is such a huge part of how I communicate with the world. But people always feel the need to ask why I’m talking with my hands. Am I Italian? And, more recently, I get asked what’s on my right wrist.

Back in December, I got a tattoo there. My “write your way out” tattoo is a constant reminder of just how important it is for me to use my voice in everyday life, and just happens to be a subtle Hamilton reference.

I’m a child of divorce. I’m a first-generation college student. I’m bisexual. I’m anxious and depressed.

    That’s a lot to have on one’s plate, and I started learning in middle school that all of those things have come to shape who I am and how I see the world. I felt really alone for a long time back then, because no one really understood me. 

    I started writing fiction when I was twelve years old. It was a way for me to figure out my thoughts and feelings without being judged, and that was such a welcome experience considering how judgemental tweens and teenagers could be. I was crafting characters and whole worlds where I was allowed to feel what I wanted and express that. It was awesome that I had something to show for all of that, but writing back then was more about expression than craft or anything.

    Now I’m twenty-one and graduating next month with my BA in English with a Creative Writing concentration. Over the course of my studies, I’ve learned how to craft better stories about the things that I really care about.

    In the year after I came out, I wrote an honors thesis that was a collection of three short stories about the coming out experience aimed at the young adult audience. This was a way for me to support the LGBTQIA+ people in my life the only way I knew how, while also showing people that don’t identify with any queer identities just how hard it can be to come out and what that means to those of us who have had to. My own coming out story was posted online through Art is Survival at the same time.

    When my grandfather was moved out of my home and into a nursing home about a year ago, I started exploring and writing about grief. No one in my life understood that anticipatory grief is a real and existent thing that people experience, that I was experiencing, so I started to write about it. It was a way for me to understand my own feelings, grapple with them, and teach others about them.

    I also spent the last year trying to come to the root of a health issue I have, and just very recently got answers. I had genuine fears for the future, and frustration that I was told that this issue simply could be because I was too fat. I knew that it wasn’t and had to fight with one doctor in particular to send me for blood tests. He was so convinced that I was just too fat that he agreed to send me for the blood tests “just in case.” And what do you know, those blood tests came back showing that these health issues I’d been struggling with for over a year weren’t because I was too fat after all. I started writing a fictional piece about those events for my final creative writing workshop class, and am working on developing it into a novel that faces those issues, female friendship, and who knows what else. I guess it’ll all depend on where my life goes during the writing process.

    So my tattoo is so much more to me than a reference to my favorite musical. It’s a reminder of all the places writing has brought me and where it can lead me if I give it a chance, if I give myself a chance. Every time I look at it, it’s a reminder of just how important my voice is, and that I need to let it be heard.