I no longer consider myself a writer. Although I enjoy the physical process of creating characters, building worlds, and putting pen to page, the whole writing process now terrifies me. The idea of ​​someone reading and judging my work freaks me out, even if it's me critiquing what I've just written. I believe this is the case because I have always viewed writing as a means of control, giving me the ability to find a perfection that I cannot have in the real world. As a child, I did not consider this mindset problematic because from the beginning of my life, I believed that I was one of the greatest writers in the world. I had the childish mindset that I could be anything I wanted to be if I tried hard and believed in myself. And I believed in myself more than anything else in the world. I had no experience, no knowledge of writers in the literary canon, nothing to compare my own work to. However, as I grew older, read more, and exposed myself to beautiful and talented writers, I began to doubt my own abilities. I learned to believe that I could never create worlds as beautiful as Tolkien's, characters as developed as Austen's, prose as humorous as Shaw's. In my head, if I didn't have the ability to write like them, I shouldn't write at all. So I gave up writing. Of course, I still wrote academic writing and articles for my high school newspaper, but it was almost impossible to have the courage to write a creative article. It was one of the darkest moments of my life. Without writing, without a creative way to express myself, I developed severe anxiety and depression. It was only when I received help for these external issues that I was able to slowly recover as a