Once Upon a Time, there was ME

I know, you're looking at the title thinking "how old is this person?". I get it. Some fifteen year old high school student should not, and I repeat, should not be using that as a title - so let me explain. When I was young, I had a bad case of separation anxiety, terrified of going to sleep alone. I even went as far as forcing my father to sit beside me every night until I fell asleep. However, before I closed my eyes, he would read me Chester, a book about a cat who was constantly interrupting the feline hating mouse who was the teller of the story. One day, Chester went as far as taking over the story, starting off with saying "Once upon a time there was ME" and hopefully you've been paying attention because that is my title.

At the age of six I was diagnosed with a learning disability, but THANK GOD that never stopped me from enjoying what I love, writing. I won't deny it, I was much slower than the other children, the humiliation of being brought to a separate room just to learn the basic words such as cat, when, me, she and you. The other students were already on level ten reading which made me feel like an outsider. All I wanted to do was express myself, what I was thinking. I had all the ideas in my head, but I was never able to get it on paper.

Childhood, a time when life was easy... well, at least when it is supposed to be. When I was finally able to write on my own, I LOVED writing short stories. Let's be honest, what I really mean by 'able to write on my own' was childish nonsense that no one was able to read or understand. But, in my foolish, childlike, mind I thought I was one of the best writers in the world.

In those days, I insisted on wearing short sleeved, summer dresses, even in the middle of winter. On one of those cold, February days, I was sitting in the doctor's office waiting for the nurse to call my name. Due to the fact that my doctor never heard of the term "on time", I would arm myself with paper and pencil to let my mind craft a story. I was inspired when I asked the friendly woman next to me, "Can you give me an evil name that I could use for my story?" And that name was "Mara". Oh, did I spin a story from that. A princess ran away from her kingdom, with a magic necklace around her neck, with a magical key. I will let you imagine where I took this.

Jump to age twelve, my dream was to become a serial killer, it would have been so cool, but over the years it dawned on me that serving time in prison would be very boring, and I would find a new passion... something legal. But now that I'm thinking about it, going to prison it might not be too bad of an idea. - I mean, three square meals a day, and all that spare time to read and write. If you think about it, prison is somewhat like an all inclusive resort, but FREE! No, Lauren stop you are not becoming a murderer! All joking aside, criminology, the type of book I can't put down. Attempting to understand the minds of serial killers such as Albert Fish and Ted Bundy it's somewhat similar to how most people love chocolate. Yeah, they are terrible and messed up, but it is fascinating to try and get in the heads of these people. Is this something learned, or is it just something in their DNA. Reading books, news articles, and listening to podcasts, has given me the aspiration to become a criminal analyst. Now that I think about it, it wasn't even a few months ago where it was my dream to become a famous writer like the next J.K. Rowling or Stephen King. Wow, talk about unrealistic goals! First I was an actress, then a singer, moved to modeling and now here I am, a criminal analyst. But, when my goal was to become a writer, I would spend hours and hours at Indigo writing and working on a novel. I pretty much spent three months straight sitting in that store with my laptop, always with a cup of Starbucks next to me. Then June... writer's block hits, and it still hasn't gone away (as you can probably tell). Frustrated, I want to continue the novel again, but every time I start... nothing!

I wouldn't say the story of my love for writing has been interesting, but on the other hand, I would not say that it wasn't - you decide. I guess I'm done here... and as Chester once said "I'm drawing the line" but hey, he was a cat who wore a tutu, so can we really trust anything he says?