My Dreams and Passion How I Became MizErie
It all began with a missing flashlight. I wasn't quite two years old, and my father was turning our house inside-out looking for his flashlight. I told a tale—one that would become infamous in my family—of a frog that hopped in the backdoor and took my father's missing flashlight under the refrigerator. Thinking I was trying to cover myself, my parents proceeded to move the heavy appliance to see if the flashlight was under it. It was not. That was the first story I ever told.
I continued telling stories through my childhood. When I was 12, my birth mother passed away suddenly, and my English teacher encouraged me to write about it. I took her advice and wrote a poem on the subject for an assignment. My teacher asked if she could submit it to a contest, and I agreed. I ended up winning honorable mention, and my poem was published in a literary magazine run by one of the state's largest universities.
But that's when I stopped writing. My father was less than impressed, refused to take me to the award ceremony, and told me writing would never take me anywhere, that I had too much potential to waste on such nonsense and needed to find a "real" career. Being the Daddy's Girl I was, I put down my pen, determined to make him proud.
Years later, I discovered the pun-rock/emo band My Chemical Romance. For the first time in my life, I found a place and a group of people in which I felt I belonged. (I'm in the red shirt standing next to Frank Iero of My Chem and the members of his other band Frank Iero and the Future Violents in the above photo.) Soon after, I discovered fanfiction, and before long, my passion for writing was reignighted. It was no longer a waste of my "potential" or time because writing was just a hobby. I wrote simply because I enjoyed writing.
One afternoon while I was upset over a particular scene I couldn't get right, my husband asked me why I took my fanfiction so seriously. For the first time in many, many years, I spoke my truth: I always wanted to be an author when I grew up. Quietly yet without judgment or question, my husband answered, "So do it. Be an author." It took me a decade to wrap my mind around the idea that I could, in fact, write books for a living, but it didn't stop there. I attended Greenville Techincal College to study Graphic Design and Website Design so I could be an all-around literary artist.
Some of the credit goes to the members of My Chemical Romance. They helped me believe who I am is enough and inspired me to follow my passion. However, most of the credit goes to my husband. He has believed in me when I didn't and encouraged me when I wanted to quit. He's read more (of my) MM romance than any cis-het man probably should and looked at more art than he ever wanted to see in his lifetime. He's been my strongest supporter, my loudest cheerleader, and my biggest fan from the very beginning.
But more than that, my husband has been an unending source of inspiration for me. He's the reason I write romance! I want the world to know that love doesn't have to be storybook perfect to be real and wonderful. True love is out there. Sometimes it might be hard to find, but I promise you that once you find it, it'll be worth every struggle!