Katy Keene Contest Entry

My Story

It was always writing for me. Ever since I was too young to know what heartbreak even was, I was writing about it, or how it felt to me in that moment, anyway.

With bright eyes and a bushy tail, I was a first-year college student in small-town Pennsylvania. I fell in love, for real this time, and spent eight months writing the sappiest love poems I could have ever thought up, heartfelt enough to bring Shakespeare to tears. Then, I really experienced heartbreak. It was so much worse than the junior-high feeling of "my crush doesn't like me back." It was dark and sad and inescapable. It was so unexpected and uncalled for.

So, I decided to write some more. I wrote and wrote and wrote until I could finally breathe again and get out of bed and not have every single thing I see trigger a memory of the person I loved. These poems were sad. They explored the depths of heartache on a whole new level for me. The pain slowly got better as time passed and I became so invested in bettering myself and making my story a beautiful one. I had a great mindset: just because something awful happened to me, doesn't mean I have to feel this way forever.

So, with those heartbreaking poems, I created an Instagram account for my friends and other fellow poets to read and relate to the sadness. "Poems By a Pisces," I titled my Instagram page. It had good alliteration and of course, Pisces is one of the best astrology signs, in my very biased opinion.

I still felt like something was missing, though. I had written all of these poems and was sharing them with others, but I still felt as if my story wasn't mine, like I didn't have control of it.

On a whim this year, I decided to take that writing and make a book, putting my raw, unfiltered, sad, sappy heartbreak poems out into the world for my friends, family, bosses, coworkers, and even strangers to read. On January 16, 2020, I self-published "Poems by a Pisces."

I'm certainly not the same person I was when writing became my passion nearly 7 years ago, as I sat in English class scribbling about how the boy next to me had eyes as blue as ocean water, but one thing did stay the same about me through the years; my love for writing. I hope my life lessons put into words can bring me to New York City like it did Katy Keene, with an amazing job upon my college graduation in May 2021 and the opportunity to share my stories with those who are willing to listen.