I've been a story teller for as long as I can remember, it wasn't until after we had moved that I became a writer. Even then it took years for me to find my voice again. We had moved away from everyone and everything I knew. It didn't matter what I did or said, the move still happened. I had to adapt to new rules, a new place all while not wanting to be here. Here as in where we had moved to, here as in alive, in this world.

The guilt of knowing my parents were getting divorced on top of the shock of Columbine Highschool's shooting happening so close to home. So close, my mother worried they might be going to grade school next and mine was the closest to them. My small child's mind couldn't wrap around the idea that the world was truly this cruel. That not only would someone kill other students, but that loved ones would kill children. Months before Columbine happened, my sister came home with a note about a friend of hers who had gone missing. Later we learned he had been murdered.

Children don't know how to handle information like that, that friends and other children being killed by people we are taught to trust. . . I'm getting off track here. The divorce, I still feel partially responsible for it. I know I had nothing to do with it, but I'd ask. "Momma, are you and Dad getting Divorced?" This happened a lot. Now my parents never really fought. At least not that I ever remember.

So it happens and feels like a blow to the head for me, Mom and we'll everyone but my dad. He says he doesn't love Mom anymore and wants a divorce, mom agrees. We move from Littleton Colorado to Illinois. I don't want to be here. For years I fought against it, I was hurting and no one seemed to listen to me. So I became hateful, I lashed out and when mom felt she had nothing left in her to fight me, she did the most miraculous thing.. she made me read the first Harry Potter book. I found my voice again. I wanted to tell stories that could bring people back to life like JK Rowling had done for me. So I started writing.

It became my way back into the world, but also became the thing that keeps me apart from it. I don't mind this distance, it's better than the void I was in for so long.. but everything is going grey and I feel like my writing isn't worth it anymore. I'm having a hard time keeping any kind of motivation going to keep writing. Maybe it's because once again I'm feeling alone without a voice to speak out with.  Maybe it's because I just can't connect anymore. I don't know. Perhaps I'll just keep trying and it will come back, that feeling of doing something worthy.