#2 in 2023

Story time: when I was 14/15 I used to write fiction. Just for fun. Just for me. I seemed compelled
to write and enjoyed it. I wrote usual things girls my age wrote about: meeting ‘the one’; travelling; experiencing my first kiss. Typical teenage girl’s fantasies. Innocent enough. Certainly not lurid. I was a very inexperienced 14 year old.
I used to hand write my short stories in red pen and save them in a little yellow plastic folder which I would hide under my mattress.
I told this boy I liked that I was an aspiring writer. I really had no place saying that, because I basically knew nothing at 14 years old. Looking back now, I was just a baby! Naturally enough he wanted to read one of my short stories. Flattered, I gave him the folder and told him to be discreet. He said he’d read them. Whether he did or not, I don’t know. I do know that a few days later his mother visited my mother. We were all part of the same congregation. She had found my folder in her son’s bedroom and read my stories. I was summoned downstairs to face her religious wrath. My tales were immoral, she told me. Was I tying to corrupt her son? she asked. I stayed silent. Too shocked and embarrassed to speak. She cried her crocodile tears. Gave me my folder of ‘dirty stories’. Then she left.
Since that day, I’ve never put pen to paper. I write of course: shopping lists, letters to friends, birthday cards. Just not fiction. I think the shame I experienced in front of my family left me traumatised. I wonder is there a way to get over an experience like that?