Sometimes, I forget how writing heals me.

I get so caught up in the drudgery of the day to day, when the clock ticks down the impossibly long seconds.

I count and count like counting chairs lined up at the front of a stone-cold classroom. I forget how nice it feels to just write something I care about, even if they’re just fairy tales.

But they aren’t just fairy tales. They were never just silly fantasy stories, not to me.

Growing up, I wanted an escape. We all do, don’t we? I loved closing my eyes and getting transported to other worlds where I could lift a sword and shield and go on adventures, fighting dragons and seeking out buried treasure. Sailing ships and feeling the sea salt breeze tangle through my hair.

I wanted to see the world in the kind of vivid technicolor that is painted only in the imagination. I wanted to forego the realism of what I experienced in the day to day to enter the video-game-simulation type of fantasy that only exists in your head.

I forgot how healing it was to just forget reality for a second and allow myself to write a story that mattered to me. A story that didn’t even necessarily need to have the “perfect structure”. No perfect placement of the semicolon in a section of prose. It was just words. Words that made sense to me, not even worrying if they took up too much – or too little – space.

I love remembering how writing makes me feel.

It makes me feel like anything’s possible in the imagination. It allows me to remember that stories matter, and they can make life feel infinite.