Stories matter: They give you an outlet for creativity and vulnerability.
By Hannah Tenorio.
I was never interested in writing creatively. I would only write when it was an assignment for school and when I did, I was not the biggest fan of it. I just viewed it as a task I had to get done. Writing seemed like such a tedious, boring, and insignificant chore. It was in my literature class, though, that I took in my freshman year, that started making me have a change in thoughts.
One day, my teacher gave us a writing assignment. Initially, I was already dreading the thought of having to write another essay. We were given a few different topic choices, so there were a lot of different directions our essays could have gone. Although, one topic stood out from the rest: write something that relates to you personally. Prior to this assignment, I have never written anything on a personal level. The essays I would typically write were formal, informative or explanatory, so this was unknown territory. Excitedly, I decided to write about a topic that I thought was very important for everyone of all ages to remember: that you never know what a person is going through until you look beneath the surface.
This resonated with me personally because I too needed that reminder and I also felt like people may not have looked beneath the surface of me. My topic choice was very vulnerable and personal and I was not completely comfortable with talking about it directly. So, I wrote my entire story using a metaphor with flowers. In my story, the flowers would flourish and thrive so vibrantly covering the frail, fragile, and hurt roots underneath. The dying internal roots were only exposed when the blossoms weren’t able to cover up the pain. This metaphor uses flowers and roots to represent how people can put up a front that seems so happy and perfect, but underneath they could be quietly suffering inside.
This specific story made me change my mind about writing. Instead of viewing writing as a chore, I now viewed it as a place to let my thoughts flow unrelentingly and give me a time to talk about a topic so sensitive for me. I learned how to be creative and non-constricting with my ideas and within my creativity, I was able to express sensitive and personal topics. Stories matter and they can provide an outlet for vulnerability and creativity.