My Debt

         For a lot of people, writing is a hobby. Sometimes it's their passion. For me, it's an obligation. Of course, I'm very passionate about writing; the ability to create characters and give them life it very precious to me, but more than anything, I must repay a debt. This might seem somewhat odd, you might think "How can a form of artistic expression be a personal debt?". To explain, I'll have to go back to my childhood and start before I had any kind of interest in writing.

         When I was growing up, my biggest interest and my dream for the longest time was comedy. I don't mean to sound vague, but I loved every form of comedy. I watched cartoons, movies, stand up, read funny books and I tried my best to be the class clown. Of course, in my early years, I had no idea how crucial writing was to comedy; all I knew was that I wanted to be funny. If I'm being completely honest, it's not something I've completely given up on, but that's a story for another day.

         The obvious train of thought would be that my interest in comedy is what led me to writing, but strangely enough, that was not the case. Comedy was something I mostly enjoyed when I was in a good mood. I grew up in extreme poverty and I lived in the middle of nowhere in a very old, single-wide trailer that was absolutely falling apart. The carpet had long since rotted away, there were holes in the floor, mold covering the walls, no source of heating and cooling other than a very old wood-burning stove in the middle of the living room. My parents, older sister and I all shared the only bed room.

         Around the time I started Kindergarten, my family was forced to move into section 8 housing in town because the trailer was so disgusting that it started to cause problems for my sister and me. It was a nice, clean, typical brick house. Nothing special, but a mansion for a kid used to living in a shack in the middle of nowhere. Not long after, my parents decided to get a divorce and my dad moved out. It was around this time that I started getting into fantasy.

         Very early on, I would lose myself in TV shows like the Power Rangers. For a short time, I could escape the reality of my situation and find myself fighting giant monsters and the like in this world. Once I learned to read, fantasy books and video games became my next outlet for my imagination. Pokémon, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl and Final Fantasy were all worlds where I could escape when things would get dark.

         It took me awhile to consciously realize how different comedy and fantasy were. All I knew was that I enjoyed both, but I never realized that they both served two different purposes. While both were extensions of happiness, comedy is an outlet for pain and frustration and a way to make light our of darkness, but fantasy is an escape from the real world that we all desperately need so we can let go of all the stress and horror of our everyday life.

         It was around the time that I read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that I started to recognize the distinction. I found myself being drawn into the story more and more. The characters had become like family and I had to know more and more about their world, their history, their pasts and their future. I started creating my own details to go along with the story, my own characters, my own history and started theorizing the future the story was going to take. I also started applying this technique to most stories I encountered.

         Thanks to this new hobby, I found myself enjoying incomplete and "shallow" stories that a lot of critics panned. It just became natural to add onto stories that I no longer even thought about it. I filled out these stories in my mind and they were complete to me. To this day, I find myself returning to stories I read years ago and being surprised that so many events that I remember in vivid detail never actually happened

         Throughout all of this, something suddenly clicked. I realized the escapism that fantasy offered me and I realized the empowerment and escape that it offered other people. I realized how important that was to the world. Suddenly, comedy no longer seemed like the obvious way to make someone happy. Sure, having a laugh is nice, but it doesn't quite sit with you the way a new adventure sits with you. Stories are gifts directly from a writer. They're intended to try to improve our lives by allowing us to live out the adventures we need, meet new friends, feel powerful and forget about the darker parts of everyday life.

         I've received and used so many of these gifts, more so than most people. I needed those gifts to get through some very dark moments in my life. Taking so much is why I feel I owe such a great debt. I was given so many gifts that I absolutely have to give something back. I want to know that I was able to offer a moment of brightness to children growing up in less than ideal circumstances. I need to be able to share my worlds with them and let them know that they aren't alone, that things can get better and that there is happiness out there. Even if I only reach one child, I will have achieved my dream. I don't owe it to myself, I owe it to all my heroes that shared their gifts with me.