For better or worse, Sorin

MIND

WRITING AS THERAPY

Always a writer

I am what you could call an avid writer. Not an avid reader, like most would think. I'm driven by my desire and sometimes need to write. Edit. Create. Publish. Share. Show to the world what I'm thinking about.

If it's one thing that has stayed with me all these years it's the pleasure and willingness to write. Looking back, it was my go-to source of escapism. If I was sad, I would write poems. If I was in love, I would write stories. If I was mad, I would write all sorts of ideas for projects I wanted to work on: screenplays, jokes, short stories, funny faux news, reviews, essays. You name it, I was interested in writing it.

There weren't any writers in my family from what I can tell. On one side of my family, my grandparents worked for the postal service and the hotel industry. The others were teachers. My parents studied chemistry and became engineers. While my mother had a hobby of writing once, that wasn't anything serious from what I recall.

I don't know when it started exactly. I know that grade school was very interesting. I had a lot of cool colleagues with hobbies and interests that would rival any X-men. Yes, I did think we were a special group of kids that was meant for something greater.

One girl had amazing drawing skills as early as 12-14. You know how as kids we all draw faces either white or yellow? She had paint brushes and would mix colors so that she'd get that pinkish skin tone. I thought that was amazing. A God-given gift if I've ever seen one. A boy was able to create these incredible alien drawings and would write short stories to go along with them. I must admit, I was envious. He had all of these skills and would later create Jackass-style prank videos and become an editor for TV shows.

There was this sense of: my colleagues are talented. They all have bright futures in front of them. Based just off of what they were doing at the time. They seemed to have abilities beyond my own. I've always felt a little out of place. And not comfortable anywhere I went. Except maybe my stories.

It would make sense that me as a loner, sitting in the back of the classroom, not acknowledging that I needed glasses to see what the teacher was writing on the blackboard, would find solace in imaginary things. Or things over which I held control.

My time in school would not be filled with stories, however. Perhaps it was fear or a lack of intention on my part. I had started one small piece of content, about dying in VR. Never got around to finish it. If anything, it taught me about what I shouldn't write about - overly complex topics I had to research.

High school was when I felt I started going down this writing road. And not just as a side distraction, but as something that consumed my free time. I started focusing on writing poems as hormones kicked in and I felt I had to do something to distinguish myself from the pack. I wasn't tall, muscular or particularly good looking. Nor did I really have the confidence to tell jokes or be funny around girls. So I resorted to something that came naturally to me: writing about how in love I was with some of my colleagues and the world in general.

Since I was quite the wordsmith, I managed to find one girl in Bucharest. We met in mIRC, which was like a global version of Slack. She was interested in rock/punk music and we mainly bonded over that. We wrote letters to each other - yes, actual pieces of paper. And I kept that up for a few months until I met her face to face for the first time. And she only wanted to be my friend. Which meant more heartache and even more poems.

Understanding myself

I continued writing throughout my university years. Although nothing major. I was focusing on the work I had to do and Journalism didn't seem that creative. At least not in the way they were teaching us. During that time I also joined a youth/student organization called AIESEC, so that kept me busy as well.