I was never meant to be small. That was not my destiny. I was meant to make things worth living for. Rich, meaningful things. It’s okay if no one saw them. I just needed to make.
I only recently began to fully grasp that fact.
Several years ago, I felt the weight of my English degree in my hands for the first time. Five years of late-night study condensed into that single document. I’d done it. I’d finished. Somehow, though, everything I’d done to reach that moment felt strange and faded to me, and my biggest obsessions, reading and writing, felt incredibly distant. The joy I’d once felt when reading had grown hazy amidst the fog of my studies. The thought of writing another story seemed impossible.
I somehow convinced myself writing wasn’t a serious career path—not as an author, at least. Maybe I’d teach English or be a marketing executive. Being an editor seemed somewhat appealing, too; I could work with authors, experiencing firsthand the creation of the stories I loved. Journalism was another possibility. I could picture myself being around the writers I dreamed of being as child but not being one myself. I was not cut out for that, I thought.
Between all of it, I could also picture twelve-year-old bookworm me quietly withdrawing as she saw herself in her twenties rejecting the biggest love of her life: stories. I saw fourteen-year-old, fan fiction writing me begin to question why she’d even bother writing those stories based on her favorite movies. I saw the vision of sixteen-year-old English class rockstar me take all the praise from her teachers and crumple it up in pieces, tossing it in the dumpster because it wouldn’t even matter anyway.
And then I saw eighteen-year-old me, fresh from high school, a hazy figure in the corner of my memory, wholly unknowing. I wondered if I should tell her. That she was about to sacrifice numerous sleepless nights and feel the crushing stress of her studies for five years. All for nothing. Those years were hard. Every day was filled with uncertainty and a fast-beating heart who felt every emotion, criticism, and feedback down to the core. I even got a dog (hi, Bailey) to help me cope with it all (she helped immensely, and she doesn’t even know it). All those hard months, many of which I struggled to even show up for sometimes because the stress had rendered me soul-sucked and depressed.
I saw it all.
Graduated, twenty-three-year-old me had grown to hate reading. Reading and writing became synonymous with anxiety, with long, sleepless nights studying for tests that I’d fail and writing about things I didn’t care about. It became synonymous with rude professors, traffic-jammed mornings, and a time when I’d become extremely lonely and fearful. College was not my shining moment, and neither was high school, though I love to learn. I love it more than most things I can picture. But I prefer to work independently and set my own pace. I don’t do well on tests, I can’t pay attention in class (I still have trouble focusing now, it has taken me ages to write this), and I was consumed with self-disgust, so much so that the possibility of getting to know my classmates and professors was out of the question for fear they would all show me the same hatred I felt within myself (this one was my fault, not theirs).
College made me hate a lot of things, that time of my life made me bitter and angry, and I thought this was simply who I had always been. I resented reading, I found it boring then, and a waste of my time. I forced myself to believe I could only be smart if I read the books assigned to me in my classes, and anything else was not worth my time. I am smart but school has always made me believe the opposite. Not by the fault of my teachers, but by my own unorganized brain.
I’ve since grown to like myself a lot more. I respect and care for myself in ways younger me would have thought impossible. I treat my body and my mind, so lonely up in that head of mine, with a lot more love and appreciation because twelve-year-old me deserves it. I sometimes see old photographs of myself as a baby, a little girl, and she is smiling and so happy, and I cry because how could I have ever been mean to her. I filled her head with so much uncertainty and contempt for herself, but she is so little and so kind, and she loves to read and how could I have taken that away from her? She wanted for nothing more than to be a writer and I kept pulling that chance out from within her grasp with everything I had. Like it was my life’s work to quell that love and that desire to do something great, because older me knew doing great things came with big risks and big risks come with big rejections, and I didn’t know if older me had it in her to deal with the rejection.
But I simply could not do that to her anymore.
I was fourteen in 2010; the year One Direction burst into the scene. I’ll allow you to put those two together. Between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, I ran a Tumblr account. These two things are intrinsically linked, I promise.
In hindsight, a teenage girl had no business amassing over 13k followers on a social media blogging website. But it is what it is, and I would not change a thing about it. I made some neat friends there. People I don’t speak to anymore, but who made that time very special for me. I made a particularly special friend. A girl from Australia. We bonded over our love of Angus & Julia Stone. I hope she’s doing well.
Remember when I said I liked One Direction? Yeah, we wrote fan fiction together. It’s cheesy and a bit predictable for a teen but I’m not ashamed to say it. It fueled my love of writing. Was it serious? No. The stories were innocent, but awkward and cringeworthy, of course they were. And they are long gone by now, along with the account they started on, so don’t bother searching. But I remember how much fun I had, exchanging notes, giving and getting advice, sharing ideas. It was a fun time for me.
I kept searching for that feeling again and again.
I graduated from college in 2019. After that, I don’t remember thinking about reading even once, though I’m sure at some point, I must have. Surely, I bought a book or two, though they mostly went unread, gathering dust on my then, remarkably desolate shelf. I partook in other things, though I can’t remember what. My memory often fails me nowadays.
Sometime in 2023, my social media began to be inundated with posts about books, academia, writing, art history, the classics. Stuff I loved.
Sometimes, when my algorithm begins to become crowded with things I don’t want to see, I put my phone down for a much-needed break. The internet should not have that much power over me, though it often does. I can’t help it, I’m a human and I grew up in a time when social media was having its big breakthrough.
This time, however, I allowed Instagram to take charge.
And that’s how I discovered the online book community when I was twenty-seven years old.
My bookshelf at the time was quite small, filled mostly with old, worn schoolbooks and novels I’d read during my studies. A stack of worn books from childhood sat gently against a collection of pristine fantasy novels which had remained untouched (and unread) for years.
But my bookshelf did not mean to me then, as much as it does now. I hadn’t cared for the contents of it all that much during those years. I also filled it with DVDs, art, and random tchotchkes I’d acquired over the years. It was just a place where my things went to gather dust.
Online, I kept hearing about a book that sounded quite familiar, and I realized I actually owned that book. I’d bought it back in 2017 or 2018? I can’t remember exactly, but I do remember running up the stairs to go dig through my shelves because I was sure I’d seen it before.
I was right. There it sat. Dusty and forgotten. I picked the thing up and devoured it in two days as if I’d never be allowed to read anything else ever again. It was exhilarating. I hadn’t felt that way through a story for years. I wanted more of it. And there began a new journey for me. A journey filled with stories, of fantasy and love and power and politics. I was then re-introduced to worlds of dragons, monsters in playing cards, Mexican vampires, animal mysteries, medieval horrors, family dramas, time traveling coffee shops, parallel magical Londons, and gosh, a never-ending list of worlds I have yet to discover.
Only a few months after, I picked up a pen again. It had been four and a half years without writing. So many years in which I had resigned myself to leaving my writing behind. But I felt inspired by it all. A story started brewing, and I owe it all to this messy, beautiful world that is the online book community. Whether you find it on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Tumblr, this community can be so beautiful and welcoming and full of drama at times, but it is wholesome for the most part.
Now I am writing a novel, and this is the first time I have written something I feel I want to share with people.
It has been a tough and very wild ride, I have spent most of this time learning HOW to write a book, procrastinating, having intense bouts of writer’s block, questioning myself, feeling inspired once more and then not, writing 50 thousand words and then scrapping them and starting over. But it has all taught me so much, and most importantly, I have finally molded my story into something I’m proud of.
And I cannot wait to show you!
Mucho amor,
ale x
the library 
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