Finding the Missing Page

Rediscovering my childhood love for creative writing.

by Reina Esparza

The booklet is still in good condition, despite being made of printer paper and staples. The date on the back is June 8, 2004.

I was six years old. The age is evident in my crooked crayon scrawl and stick figure drawing.

I smile paging through these pages now; it was clear that I spent a lot of time watching the typical Disney movies.

It was Mary’s note on one of these booklets that never left me. Mary was my mom’s coworker and she would read my childish booklets often.

“Dear Reina, your stories are wonderful. Don’t ever stop writing them!”

I’m sure my six-year-old self didn’t give much thought to it, but as I read her note now at 23, I realize just how much of a subconscious impact it had on me.

I was a quiet kid that grew up in an environment where my voice didn’t matter.

Writing stories and poems became my only outlet and I came to find they were therapeutic in a way. I could release my thoughts and lose myself in the poetry and prose; on those pages I wasn’t scared to be myself.

I’d get so consumed in writing that I’d get a callus on my right ring finger that would never go away and even though it looked like a bruise, I saw it as a weird badge of honor. It reminded me that writing was something that nurtured me and gave me a sense of freedom.

My writing hit its peak in middle and high school as I found solace and release when some prose or poetry flowed from my pen. Since it was something I loved to do, I started to seriously consider making it my profession. But as the college conversation grew, so did the fear that I wouldn’t make a living being a novelist or poet, which was a painful realization.

I turned away from creative writing in my senior year of high school, when I joined my school newspaper and I filled out college applications with the intention to major in journalism.

Over the past five years, my passion for prose and poetry dwindled. The callus on my right finger was long gone.

Illustration by Nina Walker

My current writing centers more on structure and following a particular style rather than what’s on my mind. It became more about writing for others than for myself.

Although I don’t regret choosing journalism, I started to grieve for the little girl who was so happy when she got to write a poem or a story.

But as I look at my inconsistent journal pages from the past couple of years and a short story I wrote for a recent class assignment, I realized that I didn’t have to abandon it in the first place.

Creative writing made me feel most like myself and I can still do it now, even if it isn’t for a professional feat.

The actual act of writing may be a series of choices, but continuing to identify myself as a writer of stories and poetry at this point in my life doesn’t have to be a choice. My love and passion for these things never truly left me, it was just a matter of reigniting them.

I’m a writer in every sense of the word, and I don’t have to confine myself to just one type of writing. Starting my life with creative writing gave me a base and the molding of my voice and journalism gave me the guidance and confidence to put my words out there. I can allow both to exist in my life.

I’ve come to see that calling myself a writer shouldn’t automatically mean that it’s a job description but rather a state of being. It’s a state that has not ceased since I was young, rather, its simply transformed and grown up with me.

That love never left me and it will continue to be with me as I get older. Whenever I would think back on Mary’s note and her encouragement of me continuing to write stories, I mistook it as motivation that I had to be a best-selling author or poet in order for it to matter.

But reading the note now, I see it more as a reminder to keep doing something I clearly had a strong love for even back then.

While I don’t plan on writing princess stories anytime soon, I will no longer hold myself and my inner child back from writing simply for the love of it.