I didn’t know that box existed or I would have opened it up a long time ago. But today I discovered it in the pile with all the other moving boxes. Finding this one was like finding buried treasured. I wasn’t supposed to have it, I didn’t even know it still existed. I can’t remember ever having it, but I did.

It was a box filled with my school year books. It was filled with my baby book and pictures I had made when I was younger. It was certificates, letters and cards from my childhood. And most of all, it had all my old journals from when I was 9 and all of my old writings.

Piles and piles of writings I had done. Short stories, poems, novels, everything was in this box.

Sifting through it all was a very strange and emotional and experience, since I had no idea all this existed. It had been my belief that I had left this all behind in another country – the last time I had seen any of this was more than 10 years ago. But now, I was holding a story I had written when I was 10, and that was the strangest thing in the world to me.

Seeing all the writing I had done, “just for fun” made me realise how important writing has always been to me. It’s only been in my adult life that I hid it, for reasons too many. Reading my journals, all I listed was that I wanted to be a “writer when I grow up.” I had no idea I thought that way.

This box was filled with things that had such determination, such a belief of success, so many attempts and great big dreams that I was in shock. Did I really feel that invincible when I was younger? I suppose when we’re young, we all do.

In my yearbook, next to my graduation picture, I had written as my grad comment, “I will live and I will succeed. Really.”

Looking back, I know I didn’t write that with a sense of arrogance, but with a belief that anything I wanted to do was possible. Somewhere along the line I forgot that. Somewhere along the line I forgot to do what I love to do.

How lucky I remembered.

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