Meko’s Insanity

By: Raelynn Gross

Life is full of options though you cannot see them they are there. From a young age, Parents tell their children to be whatever we want, and yet as we grow, we hear parents say that our dreams are sometimes not possible. Everything takes work, nothing is easy, and sometimes what you want as a child is very different from when you are older. For example, when I was younger, I told my parents that I would become a writer and be famous like my idols before me. My idols, the ones who inspired me were indeed some of the best writers to shape literacy, as we know it. From Shakespeare, to J.K Rowling herself I found fascination with their style and ability to make us feel for the characters they created. True both authors are different and many would disagree about my choice of true writing, but that is and who have shaped me into the author I am and wish to become.

Of course, now that I am older at the age of twenty-two, I find myself turning from becoming a famous writer, to enjoying the love of teaching the literary arts. Currently I write fanfiction and aid my readers and friends that are younger with their own writing skills. I enjoy seeing their improvements and noticing how they use my teachings. I still wish to learn all the major languages and travel, but I find myself going a different path than what I imagined as a child. My school years were always of me ranting to the teachers, or to whomever would listen to me, that I would someday write a book. At the time, I know they must have thought I was crazy. I was never the one in class to pay attention. My English classes bored me. I had already read the material and I knew how to spell. I longed for honor English, but due to my low average in Mathematics, that dream was impossible since I needed all A’s to be in the class.

I was lucky to have great English teachers though. They all supported my love to write and read, and they would comment about how they could always trust to see me in the halls with my nose in a book, or at my desk with my head in my notebook writing fanfiction about the latest craze I was in. I remember at one point I was writing a fanfiction story for JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series. A student at the time had found my notebook with the story in it after class when I accidently left it in my desk. The next day when she handed it back to me, I opened the notebook to find she had read and corrected a lot of my grammar and mistakes. When I asked her about it after class, she told me it was an emotional rollercoaster and she looked forward to the end and the official fixed update.

That had been in middle school, I was in eighth grade. Two months after she had read my story, I placed it on a fanfiction site I was using. When I went to school the next day, I showed her the link and she read my story and commented. Because of that, it fueled my love for writing. It was not until my tenth grade year in 2006, second year of High school, that I hit a writing change. My English teacher at the time gave me my first F, for the class. I was devastated and immediately hit a wall of self-doubt and disbelief. I wanted to prove to her that I was not a failure at grammar, when we entered the portion of lessons that dealt with descriptive, narrative, and illustrative writing, I immediately went to work on proving myself to her.

It is because of this want and strive, that I ended up in the position next. We were to write a descriptive two-page story and I chose to write about a suicidal girl whose friend was death. At the time, I did not think of anything but my emotion when writing it. At some point, I allowed myself to become the character and by doing so, I was she. My teacher read the paper and the next day called my parents and I, was labeled suicidal. I cannot say I deny it, because I did tame the notion of death and it did and still does intrigue me. I realized that day though, what I had been missing in most of my stories and that was true emotion. I loved the idea that I could cause people to worry for me by just a thought of some words.

I truly understood Edgar Allen Poe’s works, why his poems and short stories were successful. For the next year, I was compelled to write dark poetry and explore this new dark writing. It as I believe was how and why I excel in writing the genre of angst. I knew my family worried for me, as I slowly became the characters of my writing. I did not really have a desire to die yet, I was not scared of death, to this day the notion doesn’t scare me. It is my honest thought, that Death is not what people fear, but the actual way that death comes to us.

My grandfather on my mother’s side was the first person to set me on my writing track. He to me is the reason I continue to write. When he died, writing placed on the back burner, books became my escape. I expanded my knowledge refusing to acknowledge the real world and its horrors. The last words I hear my grandfather tell me, was not to be afraid, that death was a normal part of life. Those words were and will always be my fall back. When I was eighteen, it was those words, I thought of when my father passed away. It sent me back into the escape of books.

I spent the whole of my senior year of school with my nose in a book escaping the tension at home and the fact that my father was dying. Fantasy and writing fanfiction kept me from crying at night and facing the horrors of the inevitable death. Writing allowed me to pour my emotions onto paper. Never had I been able to show my feelings to the outside world. Only in my writing and with my characters, could I express the true way I felt. I did not graduate from High school. I failed the Graduation exam for math; the eight times I tried, I always failed. I found that I didn’t really care about it though. True I had disappointed my mother and failed at my father’s last wish of wanting me to graduate.

I hate disappointing people though, I always have and it is always a sure way to make me cry. But, with my new free time and a new laptop to explore, I quickly upped my writing to other things. I explored the fanfiction writing of Japanese Anime and learned the language. I had tried to enter the new world from what I was use to and I found myself enjoying the fluff, horror, angst, and humor I could bring to characters from Naruto and Soul Eater.  

In 2010, I got married to an old lover from High school who also loved to write and enjoyed watching anime. Two months after our wedding day, he was deployed, overseas to the war in Iraq. I moved in with my grandmother on my mother’s side where I still live to this day, and found the free time to write my stories. Because my grandmother required twenty-four hour care, I couldn’t work and I didn’t mind that. I have bad insomnia and always have had it, so one night during an all night stay up session; I was on YouTube searching for new things to watch when I stumbled across strange writings on a music video.

That video changed my writings and introduced me to a new genre of music and obsession. Super Junior’s Mr. Simple, the music and style reminded me somewhat of the nineties music group N‘Sync and I quickly began searching up all their songs. I fell in love with the new South Korean boy band of fifteen members and the wide variety of fanfiction it came with.

I was no stranger to yoai, in fact during my anime phase I heard about it but never read or wrote it. I owe Super Junior a lot for expanding my views on this new type of writing I had yet to experience. Maybe I should think E.L.F for it instead since I highly doubt the boys invented the whole yoai thing on them. In 2012, I changed from one fan fiction site to another. This one focused only on the Asian world of Kpop and other things Asian.

I met a lot of friends that held my same interest and gained a new set of readers. My fuel for writing returned as I began writing into this still new strange world to me. I wanted to prove myself in this new world and become the writer I knew fans of the genre wanted. I found myself not writing for me but for my readers. In some way it was for me as well and the want to please this new group of people, I had now chosen to be with.

My husband had returned from his deployment only to find me in this new obsession he didn’t understand. But as I wrote different genres and learned that angst was indeed my calling, I became frustrated. I needed to expand myself once more. I found myself only catering to one pacific group and I didn’t like that. I needed fluffy, romance, anything that would gain more love. I didn’t hate angst, infact it was a long love of mine that I found easy to write. Angst was what started me on the emotional part of my writing. But I was losing my other emotions to this dark horror.

Where was my happy and thrilling side of me? Was Angst and dark horror all I could feel now? My inspiration, my readers were all I could think about. Had I let them down? My writing was becoming repetitive and my creativity was lost! All my ideas, all my thoughts had vanished leaving me with recycled nonsense I now littered my stories with and it disgusted me. I had let everyone including myself down and I had to fix it. With school starting back for most of my loyal readers, I needed to think of a way to keep them enthralled with the want to comment and read after returning from a long day of school. I found that new way, when I returned to my original roots, my safety.

I picked up reading again. Stories by Jane Austin, autobiographies from Ricky Martin; my first singer idol, and JK Rowling herself once more captivated me and gave me the inspiration I needed. Realization that even they had entered a funk in their chosen paths at some point only fueled my want to continue with the want I had for pleasing my readers. My writing became nothing but the want to please and in doing so; I began to break into all my emotions and poured them into one shots and chapters. I needed to return to the emotional roller coasters I once had.