MelissaBaby
Wordy Bitch
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2017
- Posts
- 6,965
I grew up in rural Maine. My father was not a part of my life, it was just me, my mom and my older brother. We moved a lot, as the poor often do. There were a couple of spells when we lived in Bangor, but mostly we lived in trailers or ramshackle old houses in small towns. Towns that were little more than lines on a map. Sometimes there was a store, more often there was a town office, a post office and a couple hundred houses scattered along state highways or bumpy dirt roads. Once in a while there was the blessing of a library.
Friends were hard to come by. We didn't stay in any one place much more than a single school year, and most of the time there were few close neighbors. I spent most of my time alone, reading books or wandering in the woods.
The forests of northern New England nearly vanished during the logging boom of the 19th century, but as the nation moved west, the loggers moved on. The farmers left as well, abandoning their rocky fields for greener pastures. The forests took back their kingdom. To a little girl exploring them, they were a strange and wondrous place, filled with stories and secrets. Stone walls wound through deep woods. Rows of apple trees and tremendous lilacs filled glades far from any road. Even a few weathered, half collapsed houses and barns stood here and there, empty for many decades.
I attended more than half a dozen elementary schools. Despite all the upheaval, I was almost always one of the best students in my class. But I hated school. I was restless and bored. I would finish assignments in half the time it took the other students. Of course, I acted out. I'd fidget and sigh, drum my feet on the floor or my fingers on the desk. I'd pass notes or whisper to classmates.
One day, in the fifth grade, I finished a reading assignment quickly, then waited impatiently for the others to catch up. My teacher, Mrs. Lawson, stood and gestured to me. I followed her into the hall, fearing I had finally gotten on her last nerve.
She asked me what was bothering me. I told her that the reading assignments were dumb and boring. They were "little kid" stories. I asked her what I was supposed to do when I had finished them and had to sit and wait for the rest of the class to catch up.
She nodded and told me she understood. Then she handed me a book. I took it and flipped it open. The pages were blank.
"If you don't like these stories," she said, "Write your own."
The next time I finished an assignment early, I took out the blank book. We lived next to a horse farm at the time, so I started writing about the horses; their names, what they looked like, how I would reach through the fence and feed them the wild apples that fell on the roadside.
I continued writing in every slow period, and soon I wrote at home as well. My brother would tease me, so I went to a favorite spot in the woods, sat on a tree stump, and wrote. My imagination took flight, and soon, I was making up real stories. I imagined a girl, not much older than myself, who was so smart and so capable and so brave, that she didn't have to go to school and became a forest ranger instead.
Her name was Ramona, and she had wonderful adventures. She rescued animals from iron traps and rushing flood waters. She explored old cabins and found amazing treasures. She found an orphaned baby moose and made it her pet.
Puberty changes us not just physically, but emotionally and intellectually as well. Things that fascinated us as children fade from our thoughts. Most kids lose touch with their creative interests. All but a blessed few stop drawing, stop dancing, stop making music. They stop writing stories.
Somewhere, in some move, the blank book and the spiral notebooks that followed it were lost, physically and from my consciousness.
My teen years and young adulthood were troubled, as I have chronicled elsewhere for those who want to know the story. When I was twenty four, I was incarcerated. I spent eighteen months in prison. Once again plagued by restless boredom, I partook of every opportunity to combat it. There were many classes offered, and I took one in creative writing. A small spark was relit, but did not yet grow into a flame.
I struggled to rebuild my life after I was released. One day my mother reminded me of how I used to write, and suggested that writing about my experiences might help me move past them. She reminded me of the stories about the horses and of the girl who became a ranger.
A lot of things were changing in my life, and I did not start writing again for a while. I moved away, I got a steady job and most amazingly, a stable healthy relationship. Still, I struggled emotionally. I took my mother's advice and began writing about all I had been through. Just a journal at first, then a Tumblr blog. Eventually, I decided to tell my story in the form of a partially fictionalized memoir. One of the realizations that came from my self examination was that my problems with substance abuse and my sexuality were deeply entwined. That understanding led me to choose Literotica as a platform.
That series, My Fall and Rise, was received with extraordinary support from readers. I had not expected to write more, but the childhood delight in telling stories had fully returned. I kept writing, and by most accounts, got pretty good at it. I wrote a long epic romance, Mary and Alvin. I wrote an homage to all the women I had known when I was dancing in strip clubs, The Gold Dollar Girls. I was getting tremendous gratification from all of it.
But I realized that I had some unfinished business that needed attending.
Ramona. My first character, lost in limbo for all those years.
She was grown up now herself. Her adventures would be very different from those I conjured when I was eleven. But she is still smart and capable and brave.
I wonder what Mrs. Lawson would think of her now.
The Adventures of Ranger Ramona
Friends were hard to come by. We didn't stay in any one place much more than a single school year, and most of the time there were few close neighbors. I spent most of my time alone, reading books or wandering in the woods.
The forests of northern New England nearly vanished during the logging boom of the 19th century, but as the nation moved west, the loggers moved on. The farmers left as well, abandoning their rocky fields for greener pastures. The forests took back their kingdom. To a little girl exploring them, they were a strange and wondrous place, filled with stories and secrets. Stone walls wound through deep woods. Rows of apple trees and tremendous lilacs filled glades far from any road. Even a few weathered, half collapsed houses and barns stood here and there, empty for many decades.
I attended more than half a dozen elementary schools. Despite all the upheaval, I was almost always one of the best students in my class. But I hated school. I was restless and bored. I would finish assignments in half the time it took the other students. Of course, I acted out. I'd fidget and sigh, drum my feet on the floor or my fingers on the desk. I'd pass notes or whisper to classmates.
One day, in the fifth grade, I finished a reading assignment quickly, then waited impatiently for the others to catch up. My teacher, Mrs. Lawson, stood and gestured to me. I followed her into the hall, fearing I had finally gotten on her last nerve.
She asked me what was bothering me. I told her that the reading assignments were dumb and boring. They were "little kid" stories. I asked her what I was supposed to do when I had finished them and had to sit and wait for the rest of the class to catch up.
She nodded and told me she understood. Then she handed me a book. I took it and flipped it open. The pages were blank.
"If you don't like these stories," she said, "Write your own."
The next time I finished an assignment early, I took out the blank book. We lived next to a horse farm at the time, so I started writing about the horses; their names, what they looked like, how I would reach through the fence and feed them the wild apples that fell on the roadside.
I continued writing in every slow period, and soon I wrote at home as well. My brother would tease me, so I went to a favorite spot in the woods, sat on a tree stump, and wrote. My imagination took flight, and soon, I was making up real stories. I imagined a girl, not much older than myself, who was so smart and so capable and so brave, that she didn't have to go to school and became a forest ranger instead.
Her name was Ramona, and she had wonderful adventures. She rescued animals from iron traps and rushing flood waters. She explored old cabins and found amazing treasures. She found an orphaned baby moose and made it her pet.
Puberty changes us not just physically, but emotionally and intellectually as well. Things that fascinated us as children fade from our thoughts. Most kids lose touch with their creative interests. All but a blessed few stop drawing, stop dancing, stop making music. They stop writing stories.
Somewhere, in some move, the blank book and the spiral notebooks that followed it were lost, physically and from my consciousness.
My teen years and young adulthood were troubled, as I have chronicled elsewhere for those who want to know the story. When I was twenty four, I was incarcerated. I spent eighteen months in prison. Once again plagued by restless boredom, I partook of every opportunity to combat it. There were many classes offered, and I took one in creative writing. A small spark was relit, but did not yet grow into a flame.
I struggled to rebuild my life after I was released. One day my mother reminded me of how I used to write, and suggested that writing about my experiences might help me move past them. She reminded me of the stories about the horses and of the girl who became a ranger.
A lot of things were changing in my life, and I did not start writing again for a while. I moved away, I got a steady job and most amazingly, a stable healthy relationship. Still, I struggled emotionally. I took my mother's advice and began writing about all I had been through. Just a journal at first, then a Tumblr blog. Eventually, I decided to tell my story in the form of a partially fictionalized memoir. One of the realizations that came from my self examination was that my problems with substance abuse and my sexuality were deeply entwined. That understanding led me to choose Literotica as a platform.
That series, My Fall and Rise, was received with extraordinary support from readers. I had not expected to write more, but the childhood delight in telling stories had fully returned. I kept writing, and by most accounts, got pretty good at it. I wrote a long epic romance, Mary and Alvin. I wrote an homage to all the women I had known when I was dancing in strip clubs, The Gold Dollar Girls. I was getting tremendous gratification from all of it.
But I realized that I had some unfinished business that needed attending.
Ramona. My first character, lost in limbo for all those years.
She was grown up now herself. Her adventures would be very different from those I conjured when I was eleven. But she is still smart and capable and brave.
I wonder what Mrs. Lawson would think of her now.
The Adventures of Ranger Ramona
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