Writing has shaped me. It has shaped me like a sculpture shapes their clay, molding it gently and carefully, so one days it’s beauty will be known. It has uncovered secrets I kept hidden from myself. It has guided me through the hardest of my times. When I wanted to give up. To end this perpetual struggle I was living in, drowning in. It taught me to swim. I was drowning, drowning in pure despair. The waters that surrounded me were of only my own self doubt and the ridicule of peers who pushed me down in attempt to pull themselves out of their own ocean of suffering. I was drowning. I couldn’t breath and the water was filling my lungs and I thought I was going to die. And then I wrote. And it was as if I learned to swim. I want to do for others what writing did for me. I want my writing to teach people to swim with their current of despair. I want to grab their thrashing fists and pull them from their everlasting struggle. I want to teach people to swim.