The Day That Shaped Me As A Writer

This is one of those stories in which you now realize that you should have pursued writing as a career when you were young.

I wasn’t much into reading books when I was a kid. I preferred to play with my toys. I don’t recall when my parents got me my first typewriter, but I played with it. By the way, this was the early 1980s, when the personal computer was becoming popular.

I got this red and white typewriter as a kid. Although I didn’t learn how to type, I did it with both my index fingers (I learned to type like a writer when I became an adult). I wrote a story. I remember it was about a cat and a mouse, but that’s all I can recall. I didn’t write much else on that typewriter.

The Hobbit was the first book that I remember reading with interest and imagination when I was 10 years old.

I am going to tell you a short story from when I was a teenager.

The Diary

Although I don’t remember the exact age when it happened, I ‌remember that I was in High School at the time. For Christmas, my mother gave me a diary. I don’t understand why she wanted me to have it; at the time, I was writing in a journal.

It was one of those white diaries with a feminine theme on the cover. It also had a lock and key.

I wrote in that diary, but it wasn’t about who I had a crush on at school, or anything else like that. I wrote about a celebrity that I had a crush on (Which I will not mention here since I was bullied because of him). I also wrote about my fights with my mother. Without resorting to violence, I needed to get my anger out.

One day, my mother came up to me one day and told me ‌that she read my diary. But rather than be upset as most teenage girls whose secrets have been revealed, I was glad that she read it. I wanted her to know how I feel. But all she said was, “You hate me.”

Otherwise, because her English is a second language, she did not read between the lines and realized how I felt every time we had an argument. Her perspective was different and not what I was expecting. Of course, I don’t hate her.

On one of our father-daughter trips in the car, he revealed to me that the only reason why mother bought me that diary was because she wanted to read it. I didn’t mind it at all.

I wrote little in that diary. It was quickly abandoned. It has less to do with my mother’s reasons and more to do with me losing interest in and forgetting about it.

I now know that was the day that shaped me as a writer.

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