This Is Why I Published a Book with Some of My Deepest Secrets

The generation that I grew up in there is this concept "whoever feels more loses." People are so concerned about protecting their feelings but are quick to give away their bodies when both of them are very important. This concept has never made sense to me, all through my life, I have been called emotional, told that I feel too much, care too much, and that kindness can be mistaken for weakness.

I felt like I was being forced to keep my thoughts and feelings locked away. Never to be spoken about. Because If I did, I would be living in constant fear of being disciplined by being judged, neglected, or better yet, losing to a game I didn't even sign up for.

I grew custom to this lifestyle. Living day by day believing that having strong feelings about things or people was weird, or abnormal. Watching the generation around me, I tried to conform to this person that everyone expected me to be.

Eventually, I started playing the role very well that I didn't even recognize myself.

I didn't like that, so instead of talking out loud in fear. I relieved myself by writing down my feelings and life experiences instead.

When I started to write, It created a spark in me that I had never felt before. It made me feel like for just a second my feelings weren't locked away, and although no one read what I was writing... for the first time in a long time I felt like myself again.

It became my outlet. I would write letters to people, with no intention of it getting into the hands of the person it was intended for. In fact, the thought of it used to freak me out. I did it for no one but myself.

Days turned into weeks, weeks to months and months to years, and my writing collection grew bigger and bigger.

Through this journey, I made a promise to myself.

That promise was if I ever have the chance to make a positive difference in someone's life. Then why would I let that chance slip through my fingers?

This journey started for me about two years ago due to an encounter I experienced by accident.

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I went on a hunt for a document on my computer. During my clickbait strategy trying to find it, I ended up in what I like to call the deep dark web of my laptop.

It was a place where I keep my writing because I was always scared people would find it, I hid it so well in fact that I couldn't even find it half the time. I would even go as far as calling my documents ridiculous names, and then with a click of a button they would fly into the "cloud," and I would entirely forget about them.

Then to my surprise, I came across a folder called "2co0l4sch0ol 2010" right then, I knew what I had just found, a part of my past.

Although I never stopped writing, I rarely ever looked at old documents. During that time once I finished writing and my vent was over, it didn't serve a benefit to me anymore. I never thought to look back on the past because people are always telling me to grow and that to do so you need to look forward, and never look back.

Well on this innocent Sunday afternoon searching for a document for school. I learned that the strategy I've always lived so strongly toward was holding me back.

I hit the double click so fast it opened about 12 times. As I was reading the files, old memories kept popping up, and a rush of emotions came crashing into me consuming my mind and body.

I read it over,

and over,

and over.

I was entirely consumed by what I had written. The words of my past were all there right in front of me punching me in the gut like it once did before.

There were letters to people that once held a high significance in my life that I no longer have any contact with. There was a collaboration of emotions I had written down. It consisted of the good, the bad, and everything in between.

The feelings and emotions that I expressed in this old document were very present. The words were so raw, unquestionably real making it feel like I pushed that little file button and it sent me back in time, and I was re-living that moment.

It was extremely hard at first to read. It was a realization of how much of my past I had forgotten about and how much of my past I neglected to entirely get over because I was trapped in a "keep it to yourself" and "never look back" mentality.

It was at this exact moment two years ago that I realized something incredible. I found the key that I was missing in my life. For all those years that I kept my feelings behind the locked up bars that I was forced into, had gotten out. I had finally found the key I needed.

The rest of that Sunday I spent collaborating everything I have ever written and then backed it up onto a few of my devices.

I am publishing Dear Midnight, in hopes that it can touch the lives of people like it has mine. Just three short weeks after that Sunday afternoon, my MacBook crashed. I lost absolutely everything.

If it wasn't for my Sunday afternoon search that guided me down the click bait trap to the writing from my past.

I would still be looking for my key to this day.

Since that day I have come to realize it's always better to have a voice, to stick up for what you believe in, and to never be ashamed of who you are, and where you came from.

After a back and forth battle with myself. I finally decided to share my words with anyone who wants to hear them. I no longer want to keep my words locked up.

Although this generation would consider me losing because I feel more

I'm OK with that because I finally feel like I'm myself again.

therefore I am winning.