Who is the Author of your story?

To whom it may concern, 

Have you ever asked yourself who is holding the pen to your life story? 

There are moments when you look back at your life as if it were a book, every experience a page, every year a chapter. The funny thing is you realize you never actually agreed to write it. Page after page and chapter after chapter have already been written for you. Paths you did not choose or ask for. Decisions were made in courts and conference rooms where your presence was not needed. Plans were drafted for your future by people who never asked who you hoped to become.

For an exceedingly long time, you were not the author of your own story. Your story has been shaped by systems, strangers, case numbers, expectations and society; anyone and everything else except you. Your circumstances were shaped by adults who “knew better.” Your narrative was not yours to begin with. It was already planned and labeled before you got to say a word. 

They say, “You are the author of your own story.” But let’s be honest, are you really? How can one be the author of one’s own life when they are not given any choice? When you have been told where to live, who to trust and what to feel until your own thoughts fade away and you just start to follow the script. Your identity has been reduced to statistics, stereotypes and a box that you barely fit in. 

You never got to write the beginning, did you? 

None of you ever got to write the beginning of your story. It has already been written and set in stone for you to follow like an obedient child. You wake up and get on the hamster wheel, thinking you are going somewhere. But are you? Have you ever thought about the fact that you are just running in endless circles? No, because everyone else is also doing it and many pages of your story tell you to do so. How do you stop the circle? How do you even know you are in an endless cycle?

Now, the question that haunts all of us: Are you ever allowed to reclaim the pen?

And if you do then what? Will the story be done then, or are you going to write over it? Can you simply start fresh? Trying to cover a deep scar with a tattoo does not quite erase the pain. Just the look of it from the outside. The body and the mind remember. Do you wonder if, maybe, just maybe, the power does not come from rewriting or erasing the past? Maybe it comes from acceptance and refusing to let it define you? Strength is not about forgetting the pain or running away from it. You only become stronger once you have embraced and made peace with the past. 

On the days when you feel like a side character in your own story, when your voice gets small and your hands feel too weak to hold the pen, do not get comfortable with someone else drafting your story. Even if you have learned to sit back and let others speak for you. Even if you are afraid of what your own voice will sound like, use it anyway. You must still crave control, even if it scares you. 

Here is the truth: you can, and you will take the pen back. No matter how your voice sounds, you can write it out. Write badly. Write nervously. Write beautifully raw and honest. Whether it is a whisper or a shout, you can choose the next word, the next sentence, the next chapter, good or bad. You are allowed to fear the pen but still write anyway. Don’t worry about what others may think because guess what? At the end of the day, it is “me, myself and I.” Be selfish because you deserve to be after years of following orders like a puppet. Make mistakes on your own terms and scold yourself if you want.

You can reclaim what has always been yours from the start. The story is yours and you are the main character. Not the victim, not the side character, not a stereotype, but the protagonist of a perfect story that is still being defined. You can stumble and fumble with the words. Make as many mistakes as you want and still own every word of it. A story that gets to be whatever you want it to be because it is yours.

With love,

Someone who took back their pen.