The Winds of Change

Hey all you out there in Cyberspace!

Cordy here,


 There comes a point in everyone's lives where we begin to wonder if they are living their lives the way they want to, or if they are living their lives the way everyone else wants them to. In many ways I am so unbelievably glad that I do not have to hide behind a false identity on the web anymore. However, in many others I am disappointed in myself for lifting the veil when I wasn't quite ready to do so.

    The anonymity that originally came with my blog gave me the ability to speak freely and give a voice to those who couldn't be heard. Ever since I dropped my pseudonym I've found myself constantly censoring my work. On multiple occasions I've even gone back and deleted multiple posts. After I had realized how many people knew who I was, I slowly lost my motivation to write the way I had always loved to.

   As a child I wasn't like others. I always felt alone and lost despite being surrounded by numerous family members. I took solace in my books and writing stories of my own. I created worlds where the life I knew was just a figment of my imagination and heroes I had created like Nicki Potter and Dani Peters were real. They spent day in and day out fighting the injustices and hurt that I had felt and learned about in the real world.

     I used history and events of the past to inspire these stories and give my characters life. However, that may have a been in vain. As I got older and older, the boxes of my stories had multiplied but I never had the courage to do anything with them.

   I had become a freshman in high school with no real way to communicate with others without feeling like I'd lost a part of myself. So I kept writing. During my sophomore year, I made the best decision I'd ever made, I joined the Speech Team. Our assistant coach was the first real person that ever made me feel like my writing could become something and she put her faith in me. Sure, my family had supported my writing. But sometimes it feels as though your family only supports you because they are family. She had no obligation to lie and make me feel better, her support was genuine.

   I never felt like my writing would become anything or that anyone would ever read any of it (unless I'd practically begged them). But still, I felt the need to share my work. I created an anonymous blog and began writing about anything that came to mind. I figured if people didn't like what I had to say it wouldn't hurt as much because I couldn't actually hear them say it. For years I wrote anonymously never admitting or dropping a clue as to who I was. But at the beginning of 2014 I started to get emails from people asking to know who I was.

   At first I was resistant. I didn't want anyone to know who I was. For a long time I thought that people would see me differently if they knew I hid behind a fake name for so long. Eventually I had decided that nothing that anyone could say would be worse than me feeling like I had to hide who I was on the inside. It was at that point that I decided to come out to the world and put a face to my work.

     But as I did this, I felt more and more lost. Sure, my readers knew who I was, but "killing" my online persona only made living as myself much harder. I began deleting past posts that I wouldn't want my friends or coworkers to see and erasing stories I'd written.

    Out of nowhere the person I was, (the one who gained confidence through being able to write anonymously without direct judgement ) lost all motivation and drive to write. I wasn't myself anymore, I was that lost upset kid that stumbled into Speech Team tryouts. Only this time, I didn't have my writing to fall back on.

   I realize now that it is time for me to make a change again and once again become a newer stronger person, but in not sure how to go about that.

 Wish me luck everyone!

-Cordelia Cross