Thank You

When I was in my middle school English classes, we wrote a lot of essays. My teacher was also a community college professor, and was very serious about formats and word counts. The rubric for the conclusion of our book reports and essays would tell us to briefly restate our points and thank our audience for reading.

When my classmates would read my rough drafts, they would tell me that I wasn't supposed to actually thank the audience for reading my book report on Number The Stars. I would ask how I was supposed to end it, and they would tell me to, essentially, indirectly thank my audience. I had no idea what this meant, so I continued writing my conclusions the way I always had. I still hate writing conclusions for my work.

Those were the days before I ever dreamed about having people outside my classmates read my writing. I barely did any writing outside of English class, despite the fact that I had been dreaming of being a writer since I was seven years old.

I didn't feel like the kind of person who would get people to read my writing. I mean, I didn't even have anything to write about. What did I have to say?

It wasn't until I found people on the internet who spoke about their experiences with things that I had also been through. Being a sensitive kid, having toxic friends, being shy, having an anxiety disorder. Reading those people's stories inspired me, and made me feel less alone. I decided that that's what I wanted to do. Whether with fiction or nonfiction, I was going to share my story.

I wanted to make people feel less alone. I wanted to make sure that other people who had similar experiences as I did when I was living with my undiagnosed anxiety. You're not crazy. You're not alone. There's nothing wrong with you. Basically, I wanted to tell others what I needed to hear. That is what I'm doing with this blog.

Whenever I write about my body image, or my anxiety, or grief, etc., I'm writing to get my feelings out, to work through it myself. There have been several topics I've written a partial post about before I decided it was too personal, too sensitive a topic for the moment.

The point of this post is to say, thank you. Thank you for reading, for coming back once or every week. Thank you for giving the girl who had no idea what she had to say the time for her to actually say it.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

–Abbie