Writer after all

It’s taken me a long time to recognise it openly. Admitting it feels like a confession of sorts, as if by acknowledging this part of myself, I’m stepping into an identity I once saw as distant, even forbidden. I think much of my hesitation comes from my past relationship, where “writer” felt like a title that belonged to someone else, someone close to me. I didn’t want to appropriate what felt so integral to him, as if writing was somehow a limited resource, reserved for a chosen few. It was as though I had drawn an invisible line, telling myself that being a writer was something only certain people could rightfully claim, and I was not one of them.

But I can’t ignore my own history with words. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I think back to high school, when a friend gifted me my first Moleskine notebook. It became a companion, a quiet friend in pages waiting to hear everything I had to say. And I wrote endlessly (to the notebook itself, it seemed) about my daily routines, my first loves, my mother’s passing. Those pages absorbed every mundane observation, every ache and yearning, every hour and time I wanted more, searched for better people, enjoyed the life I experienced. I wrote only for myself, with no audience in mind. The grammar was messy; I repeated myself constantly, writing as much to empty my thoughts as to capture them. I even had a specific pen, a black ink pen, which I preferred over ballpoints because it felt alive, like blood on the page, something that couldn’t be erased without leaving a trace. A flawed, messy piece of paper.

My writing wasn’t limited to diaries, though. In high school, I took joy in my English and Visual Arts essays. Unpacking the shapes and meanings in artworks, analysing prose and rhythm in texts like Cloudstreet and Tom Stoppard’s works, it thrilled me. I would dissect lines, create interpretations, build arguments around them. I even remember the satisfaction of certain phrases—“syncopated rhythm,” I wrote once, to describe a passage’s cadence. Those essays felt like a performance, an act of discovery.

Looking back, I realise that part of me never truly left. I may have moved into different realms, but my love for words persists, though now in different forms. Shifting from personal reflections and literary essays to business proposals, brand strategies, and marketing plans. These documents might sound sterile, even cold, but I discovered something almost subversive in infusing them with the same passion I once reserved for essays.

Crafting a strategic document, building an argument, piecing together paragraphs to communicate purpose and direction. All this was, in its own way, a continuation of the writing I’d always done. And somehow, this skill became valued, even critical, in the work I did. It’s strange to think that a pastime could transform into such a vital part of a company’s identity. Sometimes, I wonder if all the jargon, the polished presentations, meant anything tangible at all, or if it was just a layer of performance, words with a corporate veneer that seemed to rile an applause of revenue for the agencies I worked for.

When I began my master’s programme, the academic writing felt like a return to something familiar. My dissertation became the highlight of the experience, a project entirely my own, built on curiousity and the thrill of creating something new. Now, as I embark on a PhD, the connection to writing feels inevitable. All those research papers, all the books I’ve combed through and cited, are products of the same impulse. To put words to thought, to explore ideas on the page, to engage in the intricate dance of language. Academic writing, with its rigour and formality, feels almost like an elaborate performance, and yet, it’s deeply fulfilling for me.

Each of these stages—personal, professional, academic—confirms what I should have always known: a writer has been there all along, threading through my life, weaving in and out of my work, my hobbies, my relationships. In the past, I think I was afraid to acknowledge this side of myself, perhaps because it felt too intertwined with someone else’s identity. Sometimes, this sense of shame still lingers, a quiet voice that yells with authority, in a voice that reminds me of him. Do I deserve this?

And I find myself asking, walking around in circles looking at mirrors. Who decides who is worthy of calling themselves a such a name, a skill that by right all should value and cultivate? What sort of validation do we imagine is necessary, does it take a viral post, a breakthrough novel, a collected of short stories with people bounded by their first letters? For so long, I hid from the answer, as if admitting it was another form of “coming out,” a risk of exposure that left me feeling raw and vulnerable. I thought it looked like a scar, but maybe it’s been a roll of wisdom and parchment all along, a part of me I’d never truly seen in its light.

I’m taking my time with writing this. Things have changed now. There’s someone new in my life, someone who sees me completely, and I no longer feel the need to hide this part of myself, to keep it shrouded in shadows or doubts.

I see now that writing was never something I needed to borrow or claim from anyone else. It was always mine. So, yes. Perhaps I’ve always been a writer after all.