[Guest: Aleigha Henn] Moving Forward

I sit at my university housing apartment’s kitchen table, tears falling down my cheeks. My laptop is before me with a wordcount: seventy thousand words. Seventy thousand words.

When I was twelve, I began hiding a notebook with my story under my bed. That’s when I decided I wanted to be a published author. At that time, I had a kingdom in my room: a large cardboard box filled with pillows, and paper lanterns strung up the sides of the cardboard. I opened the window to let in the spring air, fresh, clean, damp. And I sat in the cardboard box and I didn’t tell anyone that I wrote.

I have worked on this same story for eight years. This same story has been with me through high school depression, heartbreak, love, a move, family deaths, each new event shaping me, shaping the story that I knew I needed to tell. I started over on it several times—my beat-up computer monitor that I worked on as a young author deleted the files, and for several years in high school I left that piece, choosing to work on another project. But I always came back to my first story, my first comfort.

I sit at my kitchen table. It is finished. Finally finished. Relief, grief, excitement, dread for the steps ahead—all of these things, and questions, too.  

How can I let this piece go? Can I really ever truly call it finished? I have a suspicion that I need to get off my chest: Maybe I wanted to hold onto it. Writing the novel was my identity for so long—for eight years. It was my place of escape, my world. And now, it is finished.

Do I have the bravery to tell others now? Can I allow others to make it their own as well? To share a piece of my heart? It’s exciting and scary, but finally, now that I’ve reached seventy thousand words, I can’t go back, because there’s nothing to go back to. The cardboard kingdom was a great beginning to my story, but I have to knock down the walls if I ever want to become an author. It is finished. I must move forward, even though nothing will be the same.