At five years old I was a bundle of energy, bouncing around my Meme’s condo for the elderly as she rocked in her recliner. She was a bohemian woman. Artsy and free, her incredible drawings framed across the house, her stories printed and scattered. She had silver hair, and these little square glasses, with purple wire frames. She mostly played the New York Times crossword, writing each letter with a blue gel pen. I was having a dance party in her living room. It was at the same moment that she seemed as though she had enough of my childlike calamity when she gained an idea.
“Oh Madison, why don’t we sit and I can help you write a story?”
So it began, she grabbed an old composition notebook, I called it ‘Madison’s Butterfly Journal’, and we sat together at her pink marble dining table. I spewed out any tale I could muster up in my head. I had a lot of stories to tell. There were stories about butterflies conversing in gardens, and mermaids living in department mall fountains, each fantasy beautifully written in Meme’s cursive. My favorite story was about a superhero girl who flew across the wind, saving kittens in trees, and grabbing ice cream before it fell off the cone. Meme and I created adventure after adventure that day, an infinite book of my youthful imagination.
At fifteen years old, I still hold my Butterfly Journal dear, a spot for it on my bookshelf, contrasting the bright yellow cover against my white wooden shelf.
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As I grew older, I learned more and more about writing. Different poetry forms and formats, how to write short stories, how to build their plot, and how to truly write an emotionally driven memoir. How to tell the story of my life beautifully. I learned how to shine.
I couldn’t stop writing. It was like an eternal fever of emotion that I wanted to fulfill me forever. It was an insatiable hunger, an inexplicable drive overcame me with each word I wrote. I no longer had just an appreciation for poetry, I lived it, I could not just enjoy a short story any longer, I breathed it. Memoirs were previously untold views into somebody’s life; an impassable look into other perceptions. What I never imagined were the places it would take me.
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In two years I will go off to college. I used to feel talentless, life without passion was dreary. I was in plenty of activities, but none of them felt like writing. Nothing felt like the soul in each rhythmic enunciation or the melody to each word spoken. Writing gave me a purpose when the world left me alone.