When I was a child and then a teenager, the idea of peer pressure really didn’t get to me. At least, I don’t think it got to me as much as it got to other kids. It wasn’t that I wasn’t like other kids, I was. It was just that I had OCD. I had this overriding feeling of wrongness that was always in my thoughts. I wanted to make that feel better more than I cared about anything else.
As I have grown older, I think I am learning more about myself. I feel sometimes like I truly am alien. Some of the thoughts and feelings I have are different from most people. It could be because I have OCD, it could be I am unique, or it could be something I haven’t even thought of yet. Whatever the reason, I am discovering that I should embrace myself and who I am even if other people might think I am a little weird or eccentric. After all, God did create me perfectly and who I am can’t ever be wrong.
I also believe that I need to take that same approach in my writing. I worry too much about following the rules so that my writing will be good, but when I do that, I often forget about letting go of my inhibitions and letting my imagination go. I need to remember that there’s nothing I can write that will ever be wrong. There’s a movement in the horror writing community about trigger warnings. They want to put a warning at the beginning of the story to warn readers about what is to come so that they won’t get upset. The only problem is that with everything can be some type of trigger warning. After all, I read horror so that it will scare me. I want to try to start to be brave and courageous in what I write. I want to try to start to do so in how I live my life. I pray for God to help me.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
