I bounced onto my bed pulling my hair back into four wet braids. Running my fingers along the ridges and the frayed ends of the braids I thought about life. I was bored, life was boring, and nothing sparked my interest anymore.

I’ll admit it had been a tough year for me. My friends and I had all had a tough year, dealing with our own individual difficulties and each others difficulties, and life was finally beginning to calm down. When you have to take so much time taking care of yourself and the ones you care about, some of the things you used to love and have time for just kind of get forgotten. To add to that, when you’re an adolescent and something happens that changes you, you realize how childish some of the things you used to like were. You begin to be an adult, but not in the way you might think. Suddenly I was worried that something bad might happen to me or my loved ones. I didn’t know how to be safe from the fear that anything could happen at any time.

It was also near the end of the school year and some of my friends would be going to high school. It might have been a bit dramatic, but I was so upset I would cry at night. I couldn’t help it. These were people I saw every day, my close friends, and I would barely get to see them anymore.

After a short contemplation and evaluation of our existence on earth and the conclusion that it wasn’t something I’d be able to figure out, I pulled the braids tight and went to close the door. I closed all of the windows in my room because I was afraid some one would break in. It was hot, but I couldn’t take the chance.

I closed the black blinds and traded the light of the ceiling fan for the dim red light of a lamp on my nightstand. The red light made everything in the room look red. The streetlights made marks that looked like gashes in my ceiling and reflected off of the frames on my wall.

I had finished a book I had loved the night before by the same dim light that illuminated the room now. The book had been about the FBI and an island with endangered animals. I had been sad when it was over. My room was flooded with books I could have read, novels by authors like Dickens and Alcott. Some were even in piles on the floor because there was no room for them on my bookshelves and no more room for any more bookshelves. I was convinced I had read all of them, although in reality I had only read about a third. But I knew where to find a good book in all this mess. I opened a drawer in my nightstand, a secret compartment where I kept my latest intriguing volumes written by James Patterson and John Grisham. I lifted all the books out of the drawer.

Tossing the books on my mattress I looked for one to start reading. I read the backs of the books and even the first pages of some of them. None of them looked particularly interesting, at least at the moment. I peered into the drawer from which I had lifted the disappointing array of books, searching for something more intriguing, though I knew the drawer would be empty. To my surprise the drawer was far from empty. In the very back, where I hadn’t cared to look was an assortment of notebooks. Some of the notebooks looked like they had never been touched. Some though, were obviously used. The covers were drawn on, doodles and drawings that brought me back to the previous summer. Thinking back I knew what the contents would be. In those books would, no doubt, be my very own written poetry. Finally, happily intrigued in my former self and her capabilities, I plunged into reading my long forgotten art.

The first few were somewhat badly written, but as I plugged along, reading late into the night, they got better and better, until I could swear it wasn’t me writing anymore, but some professional poet with eerily similar handwriting. I remembered a poem I had gotten particular praise on. That poem was not in any of the notebooks I was reading at the time. These were my private notebooks; I never let anyone read them. I remembered the people who had read it had told me that was what I was meant to do, what I should be when I got older. I had let that go. In all the commotion of the year, I had lost what I needed most the whole time, an emotional outlet, a truly important piece of my self. But I could get it all back. I opened the notebook I had been reading to the first blank page. I looked at the purple lines set perfectly on the off-white page and started to write.