Cookie's Two Cents

 "A piece of me is missing"

Is the exact phrase that rushed into my slightly rusted brain, as I struggled to do the one thing that always felt like my superpower, a hobby I cherish so deeply that I once could not recognise myself without it, yet today it felt so beyond my reach, so much so that you could convince me the moon was more attainable than this skill that once defined me better than my name - writing. I sound dramatic, but well, what do you expect from someone who spent her whole childhood physically present on earth, but mentally residing in a transcendental realm of imagination where Harry Potter exists, but so does Robert Langdon, and so do The Famous Five? Yes, in my tiny little utopian imagination, I spent my entire childhood believing that the world is my oyster, flying like the only bird in the sky, until I felt my wings being clipped by something that is definitely scary, but alas, inevitable - growing up. As my notebooks started filling up, the figments of imagination that kept me cozy like a blanket started fading away. It wasn't long before my books that were once attached to me like an organ started being pushed into a gloomy stack in a corner, and writing, which was once my escape from this arduous world, became a chore. And all of this, over the years, led me to this moment. Today, my adult self, attempting to write a few lines for a CV, failed tremendously at something that the mini me, albeit with a few human flaws, would have flawlessly done in the time it takes me today to even form a coherent sentence. I sighed, as my tired eyes flooded with melancholy, darted towards my former treasury, my bookshelf. But today, instead of the usual self-pity and pessimistic thoughts that I love to wallow in, I had an epiphany. "I used to write," " I used to read," "I used to imagine," "I used to dream." Start again. And so, here I am relearning what I forgot, picking up pieces of me I left behind, reversing the damage I caused to the best of me, by sharing my two cents, not for the sake of anyone else, but for my past, present, and future self. And while this think-piece may not be perfect, and I might need to polish and refine a lot before I can say I'm me again, consider this the first stepping stone in a journey that might be exhausting, but never not worth it, a path I will follow till the very end.

From me to you,

Kookie.