She was twenty-one.

A graduate student.

A dreamer.

A chronic procrastinator with an alarming talent for convincing herself that watching *just one more episode* absolutely counted as productive research.

She believed entire worlds could be built from a notebook, a playlist, and enough imagination.

Some of them were.

Others are still patiently waiting inside dog-eared notebooks, scribbled between lecture notes and grocery lists, exactly where she left them.

She adored horror films but cried over fictional characters.

She had an unfortunate habit of falling in love with impossibly handsome men who lived exclusively inside books and television shows. Jace Wayland. Will Herondale. Theo James. Douglas Booth. They all occupied embarrassingly large portions of her imagination at one point or another.

She binge-watched *2 Broke Girls*, *Shadowhunters*, and *The Vampire Diaries* with remarkable dedication, usually while promising herself she would start writing immediately afterwards.

She rarely did.

Instead, she designed book covers, devoured novels, replied to readers faster than was probably healthy, and occasionally remembered she was supposed to be earning a postgraduate degree.

She introduced herself here as *Rayna Malik*.

And for a while, she was.

Those stories were written before experience had much to say.

They were built from curiosity, hope, borrowed emotions, and a wonderfully overactive imagination.

Today, I write from a different place.

Life eventually gave me enough stories of its own.

But I owe an enormous debt to that twenty-one-year-old girl.

She believed she would become a writer long before she had any evidence that she could.

She kept writing anyway.

And somehow...

She was right.

If you'd like to meet the woman she grew into, you'll find her at "@wanderingxee".

Zulekha Rayna Nadeem.

Malik Awan.

Teacher. Researcher. Writer.

The same girl.

Just expressing herself in every shade she has ever been.
🤍