Children of Ink

I’m sixteen years old, yet I was born merely twelve years ago. When I tell people this they look at me strangely, the belief that I might me be crazy drawn clearly across their faces. To reassure you, I am perfectly sane. I simply mean that the date of my physical birth is not nearly as important to me as the day I came alive through the one passion that would consume the rest of my life. When I was four, as a punishment, my dad gave me a notebook. I was to use it as a checklist, so he could make sure I did my homework. Needless to say, I wasn’t as interested in academic responsibility as I was in toys, games, and other childhood thrills. I simply couldn’t find any reason for memorizing words that stood for objects, places, people, and ideas if I couldn’t express how I felt about them. Then, slowly but surely, through the ideas that began spilling out from the tip of my pen, I learned that these words could be used as a mirror for my feelings. I learned they could reflect the insides of my mind so that other people could visualize everything I felt and thought.

Next thing I knew I was using this notebook to finish my first short story--now I look back and laugh because it was a bad rip-off of the Legend of Zorro--and from that moment on I knew I had found where my soul truly belonged. It didn’t belong inside my body, but hidden in the words that inhabited the endless pages of notebook paper carelessly strewn across my desk. It’s purpose was not to be buried deep within me, but to be transferred onto sheets and passed around like a public object, so those who read my words could judge and tell me what was wrong and what was right. My soul was to be my passion, the act of writing barely a formality through which I could achieve its expression.

Over the years I have realized writing is almost a different language for me. I communicate better through it than I do through speech. The written word has become the dialect in which my thoughts and feelings communicate with each other. This simple way of expressing myself has helped me cope with some hard times. The first time I wrote something to help me and not just for fun of it was after one of my best friends passed away, when I was a small child. My friend had been playing a childish game of cops and robbers with his brother and a couple of friends with what they thought was a toy gun. It turned out it wasn’t and a shot was fired. Next thing I knew my friend was dead. Many people tried to comfort me. The only two friends that succeeded were my pen and my pad.

I remember the day like it was yesterday. Most of all, however, I remember the days after. I was broken. I felt like something inside me had snapped; like a door that I had been so close to reaching had been shut, and I’d never be able to open it again. I knew who was behind the door, but I also knew he was gone forever. Finally, in a frustrated attempt to somehow bring my friend back, I wrote everything I felt on a piece of paper. I don’t know how it flowed so well; I was expecting it to come out choppy and littered with both content and grammar mistakes. Instead, my rage, sadness, and hate towards life transformed to art before my eyes.

The stories I create may seem simply words laid out on a page to some people, but I can assure you they are not. In fact, these creations are my soul incarnate, my feelings materialized so that readers might let their minds take them in and, if they’re well enough expressed, feel them too. Therefore, I must thank these creations: the short stories, the poems, and the essays. If it weren’t for them I wouldn’t be the person I am today: a person that’s not afraid to show his true feelings, and in fact embellishes them with writing so that they’ll look better. If it wasn’t for the offspring of my pen I might not be the same person that stands in my mirror today. If it wasn’t for the children of my ink, I might’ve never found my true self.