I grew up in a not so great home environment, even my neighborhood was a bit rough. I found reading to be a great escape, from home, from my lack of friends, from the violence and turbulence in the world – everything.
I could imagine the characters as my friends, or even what would happen if I was the main character in different books and what I might do differently. I read so many books growing up from the famous Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, to the more obscure, Tamora Pierce. I even read the classics, Aesops Fables, Grimms Fairy Tales, Dracula, and Frankenstein.
When I write, I can pretend I am someone else for a while. It brings me a calm in a different way than reading. While I cannot keep a diary (it just doesn’t work for me) I find blogging a little easier. I have themes and experiences to draw from. To be honest I find it difficult to write in a diary, I feel like the direct expression of what happened fails to hold the catharsis that blogging holds for me.