Personal Narrative: The Way I Read

When I was little I liked to watch cartoons, but I absolutely loved to read. On Mondays I would spend hours at the library gathering a pile of books I would read that week. I always enjoyed reading because I would usually learn a few new words per day. As some one with English as their second language, this meant a lot to me. I learned how to figure out what a word meant from context clues, and after that I almost never had to pick up a dictionary. Reading was my way of passing the time till my parents got home, or while I had nothing to do. I would get lost in a book for hours, only realizing what time it was when I was done reading for the day. Now that I am a full time student that works part time, I do not get to read as much. Books
are just too time consuming nowadays. When I was visiting my boyfriend at University Park one weekend, I saw him reading something on an app. “What are you reading?” I asked, expecting a book title and already starting to become impressed. “Reddit” he answered without even looking away from the screen. “What is that?” was my first question, I have heard of Reddit before, but I never really understood what it was. I peered over his shoulder, and read along with him for almost an hour. Arsen, my boyfriend, mainly read new articles from all around the world. I enjoyed reading with him, but I quickly got bored of looking at articles over and over. Upon downloading the app myself, I discovered there were thousands of different categories, called “subreddits”, that people post on. There is literally a category for anything and everything you could imagine. I came upon a subreddit called “writing prompts” and I stayed up every night for an extra 1-2 hours just reading all the different stories people posted. It was easy, interesting, and if I did not like the first few paragraphs, I could easily close it and find a different story to read. Soon enough, I became some what bored of the plain stories that people would post on there, and decided to venture out into a new subreddit I heard about, “NoSleep.” NoSleep is also a subreddit in which people submit stories, but these are horror stories. Stemming from my love for horror movies, this became my favorite subbreddit for over a year now. Every night, I get into bed, pull my covers up under my chin with one hand sticking out of the side to hold my phone and start reading NoSleep. To me, it is a replacement of books. Sometimes the stories are really creepy, and freak me out a little, but they are always a good read. After being a fan of this subreddit for a few months, I began to imagine stories that would be great to post on there.
At first, when I sat down to write the story I pictured, it did not sound as good as I wanted it to. I remember having a pen and paper on the table, and struggling to get all my ideas out in the same order that I wanted them in. I picked the pen back up after sitting for a few moments just staring at what I created, and started to jot down what each paragraph would be about. The entire time as I was writing, I was very nervous. Although the people that were on Reddit were really nice, I was not an experienced writer and I was scared that someone would ridicule my
story. As I typed it out, I remember thinking to myself “It’s ok, it’s your first time posting something, just relax.” I was sitting at my laptop, doing a final revision of my paper, drinking warm tea with honey, and my heart was going wild. “What if no one likes it?”, “What if someone points out a bunch of grammar mistakes?” , and my biggest fear was “What if someone tells me I should stop writing?” Half of me was excited to post the story and share my work of art, and the other half was frightened to be put down over my said work of art. To my shock, my story was #1 on the list for three days straight.
Over two thousand people read it, and over 900 up voted it. Readers found my story interesting, relatable, and thrilling. I had a power trip that weekend. I felt amazing, and I even started to think of other stories to write about. I found that for me, the best way to write is to wait till a story pops into my brain. I have written three other stories after that, and each have been treated just like the first. I used to dislike writing when it was an assignment for school, but this was nothing like I have done before. The words came out of my thoughts and onto paper at a speed that my hands could not keep up with. I had so many ideas, and I never had a moment of writers block. It was an amazing feeling. I would spend some nights reading what other people posted, and the rest writing my own
stories I never really thought back to how much I liked reading books until I wrote that story. I realized that all the books I’ve read, not only inspired me, but also gave me a great vocabulary with which to write my horror stories. I wish that I could have brought those written pieces to my senior year English teacher, I do not think she would have believed that I finally enjoyed writing.