I Write and I will Become Anonymous

Often, when I speak I have a slight stutter. I am accustomed to spending hours pacing my room, practicing a confrontation in my head, attempting to predict how the other person may retaliate, all in the hope that I won’t stumble on my words. Up until about ninth grade I couldn’t pronounce my R’s properly and even today my voice is so shrill that it’s not unusual for strangers to mistake me for a prepubescent girl by my voice alone. When I speak, all the confidence I have grown to possess shrivels up and seeps into the ground like a fading rose petal in late September. When I speak, I am not me. That is why I write.

When I write I can become whom I strive to be. When I write, people take notice of me and my perspectives and my intelligence. I am a person of worth through my syntax and rhetorical devices, not just some little girl with a naïve eagerness to change the world. I want to be impactful - and writing is my sole means of this. In replace of dancing sugar plums at Christmas or a game-winning goal before a soccer match, I imagine neatly typed letters flying around my head to create the perfect sentences: sentences worthy of capturing the attention of the masses.

An effective story can connect an increasingly divided and...