Since my early childhood, I have dreamt about following my writing desire.
At the age of ten, I would flick through the pages of the Sunday Mail newspaper, dreaming of becoming a journalist. Those feature articles were fragments of my burning passion as a teenager, with the yearning to follow in their footsteps.
However, as a teenager, I fell mentally ill, the artwork I had created as a teenager fuelled my mental anguish. Due to participating in drugs, the world I had created to feel secure in, had come crashing down. People began to look animated, their facial features appearing distorted. A ‘friend’ had kicked me out of her home, and I retreated to my parent’s house.
I locked myself in my bedroom, exhibiting signs of anorexia and severe depression. Each day morphed into each other. The only thing keeping me alive was the words I wrote in each page of my journal. Each word I wrote gave me happiness and hope, that there could be another life for me.
After months of my illness worsening, I was finally hospitalised. I went to live in housing at Murray Bridge and tried to return to year twelve, with no luck. Years later, at 25, I completed my second year of year 12, gaining entry to Communication Studies at Magill University. Then again, I fell ill.
During my late twenties, after the birth of my child, I returned to university to study Journalism by external studies. An accident happened and my daughter received burns, making me stop studying. I am now 43, and I am back at Southern Cross University studying an Associate Degree in Creative Writing. I teach editing techniques to my daughter who is now 16, and I feel a real connection with my writing more than ever.