My Story...maybe

If there’s one thing that makes me nervous, it’s writing about myself. I’ve never thought about writing personal essays, and the one class I took in college that I tried to skip as much as possible was “Personal Narrative,” where we began every class with writing a one-page story about ourselves, and at the end of the quarter had to share—out loud—a ten page personal narrative that “exposed our genuine selves.”

No thank you.

To be honest, I just don’t find myself that interesting. My memory of childhood doesn’t stretch that far, I was a normal teenager who struggled with normal teenage problems, I’m now in my early 20s working to figure out how I want to live the rest of my life, which about every writer in their early 20s seems to be writing about on Thought Catalog or Buzzfeed every day.

But maybe that’s the point of being a writer. Maybe writers have to look at things that have been thought about, talked about, and written about for centuries, just to remind their readers what’s still interesting about them. Maybe no matter how “normal” something or someone may seem, there is nobody on this earth who doesn’t have their own unique story. Maybe I’m just figuring out what my story is.

Right now, I just graduated from college with a degree most people think is pointless, but I wouldn’t trade for the world. I live in an apartment so close to the ocean that I can fall asleep to the sound of its waves. I have to move away from it in four months. I freelance write, edit, and tutor for work, and I’m writing yet another novel. I procrastinate for days at a time by watching Netflix. I have friends I love and friends who I’m not sure will be in my life for much longer. I eat pizza at least once a week. And whatever I write about on here, you can probably assume it’s going to be related to one or more of these small, but significant, factors of my life.

Here’s my story to tell. I’ll try to make it interesting.