A few weeks ago, my mom brought by two boxes of childhood memories that I knew I couldn’t part with, though initially I didn’t even remember what was in the boxes. As I took a nostalgic trip down memory lane one evening, I found diaries starting from when I was really young, stuffed animals I could never part with, and best of all, stories and poems penned by yours truly. Interestingly enough, as I poured through everything I had written (at least those of which I kept), I noticed some distinctions within the words.

Within writing, there is the concept of “finding one’s voice” as a writer. I used to believe I was still searching for mine, not knowing when it would be fully developed or when I’d know I had one worth remembering. However, the authenticity of my “voice” as a writer, especially once I was high school, brought tears to my eyes. For instance, I was looking through Academe, a literary publication my all-girls’ school published during my junior year of high school. I was mindlessly flipping through the pages, stopping at prose or poetry that caught my eye or pulled at my heart. I read a poem called “The Barn,” devouring it, literally hanging on every word, and wondering the whole time who had written the poem. It wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the page…that I realized the author was me.

“The Barn”

I am a lost soul

On the search of self discovery

Looking in every nook

Every cozy log cabin

Finally stumbling upon

An old abandoned barn

 

Its windows are shattered

Showing the whole inside

Much like a heart

Left for the world to tear apart

It is overflowing with hay bales

Resembling each happiness

Each piece of simplicity in life

But leaving gaps

Just big enough for grey skies to surface

 

There are camping lamps in each corner

Shining light upon this life

And guiding the way

But sometimes burning out

To force me to find my way

In complete darkness

Dead silence

And hazy fog.

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As you can likely deduce from this poem, I’m definitely an “old soul.” I wrote “The Barn” 9 years ago, at the age of 16. By that point, due to all the physical and metaphorical obstacles I had to traverse as a result of my disability, I felt like I had enough life experience to last decades. What I didn’t realize until I read this poem as a 25-year old adult is that I have always had a “voice” as a writer. Over the years, I have refined it, strengthened it, and molded it into the essence of who I am today. Even as a child, the foundation of my voice was there, sitting in the dark, patiently waiting on my words to bring it to life. Maybe I never had to “find” it after all. Maybe it was there all along, waiting for me to be ready to come looking for the piece of myself that would allow all the others to fall into place.