Hello everybody!
My name is Teresa Boykin and this is my first blog post ever, so bear with me.
Before I really delve into what I want to talk about today, I’m going to share a bit more with you about my family. First, I am a middle child (meaning the invisible one) and I have two sisters. My younger sister is about to graduate high school, and my older sister has been married just a couple months shy of a year.
As sisters, we competed with each other in everything, and I defined myself by the competitions that I won. I was the smart one. Little Sister was the social one. And Big Sister was the athletic one.
Then the balance began to shift. Our designated roles were changing and being taken over. Little Sister and Big Sister both had other roles to switch to or fall back on, but I didn’t. I was supposed to be the smart one. End of discussion. But I wasn’t anymore.
I felt like I had nothing special to me for a while. Then, in the eighth grade, my teacher told my class and me to write short stories. I completed the assignment and turned it in without giving it a second thought.
Being the quietest in the class, I wormed my way out of standing in the front of the class and reading it myself. Because of that, I was able to watch my teacher’s reaction as the story was read. She loved it. When it was done, she praised me for it. So, I assigned myself a new role: the creative one.
I wrote stories by hand (sometimes typed on an obnoxiously loud typewriter) and I received praise for each one. Looking back, maybe it was shallow for me to pursue something just because I was praised for it, instead of because I loved it regardless of how my work was received. But I had something about me that was special again.
Over time, I came to love writing. I love the way the words flow across a page, the images my mind conjures, and the people and places it creates. And that’s just the start of it. In my mind, I can create entire worlds and histories and so much more. There’s no limit to what my mind can do. And the characters I create are as complex as I am.
I am no longer the creative one. I’m not the [blank] one or the one who [blanks]. I am not a category. I am Teresa.