I Used to Think I Was a Writer

I used to think I was a writer. I wrote all the time in high school and in college. I wrote for and published in various school publications — college newspaper, literary magazines. I wanted to be a writer. I was a writing major. After college I took writing classes for fun at a local community center. I joined writing groups. I talked to my friends about writing. I wrote letters to my friends all the time. To two friends, specifically, long detailed letters that I thought were writerly or poetic. They were my ideal readers — the ones who I was writing for… I had “ideal readers” then because I was, in fact, a writer though I was too scared to ever try to publish my writing. I would think about sending my writing out and the thought terrified me. Rejection terrified me. But I kept writing. And then I went to graduate school and continued to study writing and the teaching of writing and I became a teacher. A teacher who was trying to be a writer but was mostly only writing term papers and then eventually a dissertation. And sometimes lyric essays. I still joined writing groups and I wrote. For a long time I wrote. And even when I stopped writing I was at least writing my dissertation and then I stopped writing that too and for a very long time then I wrote almost nothing. And now I have thought to begin writing again, to begin at least trying. But writing feels so much harder than it did before. It feels like I have lost something. I used to think I was, not just a writer, but a decent writer… like at least every now and then I would find the right combination of words that fit and that held some bit of magic in them, that said the thing I wanted to say exactly how I wanted to say it becauseI was able to get the words into just the right order, which I knew sometimes how to do because I was a writer. But things have changed and I don’t know why. Things have changed and I’m not convinced anymore that I am at all a writer. Though I still think that maybe once upon a time I was.