The world is watching—waiting—for something, anything to appear on that blank sheet of paper. However it’s been hours, and the most I can do is stare like an idiot. It’s the closest I can get to begging on my knees, and if that was all it took then I think I’d spend my entire life groveling before a pen and paper, pleading for the words to come to me.  

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. 

The clock is ticking, and time isn’t going to stop for me. The world is moving faster and faster, and I can no longer recall a time when I wasn’t desperately chasing after the people who were once behind me. People pass me by the second, leaving me to rot in irrelevance. Yet the blank paper still mocks me, laying there, disgustingly naked and wordless. I’d pray for a sentence, a word, even a letter. Just something, anything to show for all my blood and tears. 

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. 

Except the world is no longer watching, because it’s forgetting about me. The greats are on pedestals and the prodigies are on podiums. While I’m just the leftover residue of what was once revered as exceptional, now insignificant and mediocre. Left to crumble in the dark where no one can see the mess, pushed to the side by those who used to greet me with a smile in favor of the younger models, more talented than I ever will be. Those people, they’re the ones that can put something on a page. They’re the real writers. 

I need to move faster. I need to do something.  

However time isn’t going to stop for me, and people are not going to wait for me. 

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Time’s up… 

I’ve always called myself a writer, yet there’s nothing that terrifies me more than a blank sheet of paper. My inability to put anything on the page only fuels my frustration with myself. Ideas constantly circulate inside my head, however, they never leave the landscape of my mind. Instead, they choose to remind me every day that they’ll stay in my mind until I regain the ability known as basic writing. A five-year-old could pick up a pencil to write their name with more confidence than I have when I sit at my desk with a pen in hand. 

There were times when all I had to think about was my raw passion for storytelling. Starting from the humble beginnings of a kindergarten playground where a crowd of hyperactive four-year-olds looked to me for the next game to play, to my modern days of drafting movie scripts at 1 a.m. after my work as a high school student pauses for a few hours. 

Stories are what people go through life to experience, and I loved giving that to people. However, as I got older, time became more of an intimidating presence that crept in the back of my mind.  

Writing went from a passive passion to desperation for relevance, as I became more painfully aware of how little time I had left. To write something significant, something that matters, something that would distinguish me from the thousands of people in the world. The people around me who had once seemed to be casually going about life were moving at light speed, accomplishing extraordinary things and moving closer towards their goals.  

However, time wasn’t going to stop for me.

The harder I tried to catch up, the farther it felt I was getting from the rest of the crowd. The clock was ticking louder, yet the papers in front of me were becoming emptier, and it felt like I couldn’t do anything about it. Words began to disappear from my notebooks, and the once heartfelt excitement I got out of writing became a bitter frustration. I felt a wave of unrelenting anger within myself as the one distinguishing and exceptional part of me that validated my reason for existing was disappearing before my eyes.  

Yet time wasn’t going to stop for me.

Friends were drafting books, classmates were writing poetry and even close friends were standing in the limelight of their successes. All well deserved and worked for, yet were well beyond my reach. Despite how hard I would try to force myself to write, all I could do was sit there and watch. 

I’m only 16-years-old, yet people have no idea how hard I’ve prayed for those blank papers to fill themselves with words. A writer incapable of writing. An incompetent storyteller with the inability to write stories worth telling, no matter how many hours she sits in front of a desk.

Except time wasn’t going to stop for me.

Soon enough, it became a fight to stay in the light. I wasn’t writing anything, period. Hopelessness consumed me, and when I faced my failure to produce anything yet again, the repercussions came in the form of a major burnout. 

I broke three pens and a pencil that day, but the most important takeaway was in the realization that I had reached a point where it was unhealthy to continue this cycle of frustration and anger. I was told as much by the people around me, and so began my first week away from the pen and paper. 

Life began to look a lot slower and I started to feel more relaxed. It was an existence outside of the clock, where I wasn’t constantly looking back at the minute hands, but at the world around me and how enjoyable living in it could be.

Life was a lot more fun, and for the first time in what felt like ages, I wasn’t living for what I thought was my ‘purpose’. I was living for the sake of passion and getting to experience the things I enjoyed. I think I started to smile more. 

The people around me were still moving, but it didn’t feel like I was desperately trying to catch up. It was more as if I was walking beside the track they were speeding through, watching them push themselves towards their goals while also enjoying the view around me. 

A lot of people are like that, forcing themselves to sprint through life just to be first to cross the finish line, but I don’t think it really matters who gets there first. We’re all running towards the same thing, and we’re all trying to reach the end, so what’s the use of sprinting. The aftermath could be burnout, and a missed opportunity to enjoy the things around you, so why look to see if there’s someone behind or ahead of you. 

Slowly but surely, the pen and paper began to make its way back into my life, but I was no longer pressing my pen aggressively against the paper. It was occasionally being taken out of my drawer and used to jot down short thoughts or small ideas, works that I truly believed in and had a passion for. Words were slowly returning to my paper, but I’m not in any rush to fill it just yet.

It could be today, tomorrow or ten years from now, but I think that taking your time with something shouldn’t be so frowned upon, because the truth of the matter is that students are, in fact, teenagers. We have our whole lives ahead of us to do the things we love, the things we’re passionate about and to accomplish the things we dream about. It’s okay to not know what the heck you’re doing sometimes, and it’s okay to not have anything ready for the challenges that await your existence outside of high school. It doesn’t make you any less valid.

I could have that page stay blank for most of my life, but nothing can change the fact that I love writing at my core, and if I love it, I’m not going to stop writing until that page is filled with a story worth telling. It just might take a while.