Finding my Voice

Can you remember who you were,
before the world told you who you should be?- Danielle LaPorte

I guess I’ve always know that, but when I ran across this quote one night, it was like I found the answer or explanation to what I am, or what I’ve felt.
In elementary writers workshop was my favorite thing to do. I wrote about anything and everything that came up in my head. It was something that gave me comfort.
All my life I let people tell me or emphasize the fact that I wasn’t cut out to do anything because I had ADHD. Making me feel like I wasn’t smart enough to accomplish anything.
People tell me what to be because it was easy for others to control me, to tell me what to dream and what to be in my life. I spent my whole life trying to be someone I wasn’t for peoples approval.
When you hear it for sometime you too begin to believe it yourself. I have been hearing it my whole life at least it’s what my head thought.
I put writing away to pursue in a different talent; music. I was good at singing especially when I was alone, but then the second I opened my mouth I had a voice.
People cheered and were amazed and it gave me joy. It was the first time people gave me recognition for anything.
It only lasted so long until I got into high school.
Those were darker times for me.
After a while I used my voice in only to make people notice, to feel appreciated for being good at it. I felt like I was good enough, I felt loved.
In the end, it stopped making me happy. Every time I opened my mouth I began to hate myself more and more each time.
I lost myself and drowned in my own depression. I realized that I was only liked for a having a good voice. I was on my own and nobody was there to raise me up from the dark, nobody there I could count on.
I was hiding behind a voice that wasn’t mine at all. Cause how can it be when it made me want to commit suicide.
For that while I felt like Elsa.
After the end of my junior year and summer came along that’s when I started getting into fandom. I started doing fan art of cartoons and it made me feel better about myself.
When I became a senior it was when I started writing my first fan fiction. It was good to start out some practice writing.
Then it hit me one day, like a calling.
This new hiding talent that I had was what I was good at and it gave me such an adrenaline rush.
Writing made me feel better about myself and it was so much fun to do. It was like I was creating the world that was waiting to come out of my head for some time. Being able to express my thoughts and feelings on paper and reading it back to myself.
I had no one to control me and no one to tell me that I was wrong, because I was the writer.
I finally found my voice
My true voice.
It was buried deep inside me, screaming and scratching in my soul to get out.
After I found it something began change. My way of thinking changed, my heart changed and so did my personality.
I began to realize that my friends weren’t true friends, because they were the ones making me feel negative.
I soon started to appreciate doing things alone and being alone. I accepted myself as an introvert and stopped wearing black.
I came out of my dark place and felt the sun on my face. Something I haven’t felt in a long time. The flowers smell so much better now for me.
I’m like a caterpillar waiting to come out of its cocoon. I will rise like the break the dawn.
But sometimes I wish I would’ve read more books.
Or wrote more stories,
I wish I would’ve realized it sooner.
I believe it would’ve saved me growing up
because I have found out that I can find way better friends in a book.
Maybe its a good thing I realized it now then later, cause I would’ve gone throughout my whole life being told what to be.
Not having a voice.
So can you remember what you used to be before the world told who you should be?
What’s your story?