“A reason I became a writer was to escape the hopelessness and despair of the real world and enter the world of hope I could create with my imagination.” This quote was stated by the author, Ray Bradbury and I agree with this. I believe that you can use your imagination to truly escape the real world and enter a better one. A world where you can be invulnerable. A world where you can have anything you desire. A world where you are your own person. I also believe that there are many ways to enter this new world.

To begin with, I came across this belief because of my stress. I’m awful at time management and I couldn’t balance sports with my schoolwork. One time, I became so stressed that I dropped everything and started to draw then read. I found out that when I put a pencil to paper or stuck my nose in a book, my stress level would decrease. I would always put myself into the story of the book I was reading and the real world would slowly fade away and then would be replaced by the story and characters. I would watch the story unfold in my mind. When I drew, my drawing always had their own story connected to them. That story would spark my imagination and I would create art. Sometimes I wrote down the story and attached the (not very good) artwork to it. I wrote mysteries, romance, and fantasy stories, without pictures, for my eyes and my eyes only.

My stress increased when I was in the third grade (and I know that young kids don’t have a lot of stress, but it felt like I did). This was around the time I was being bullied by one of my closest friends. And I know this just turned into some sappy, personal memoir but it led me to my belief. Anyway, during this time, I felt like I was depressed (again I know young kids don’t get depressed but it felt like I did). I started to believe that this “friend” of mine was spreading rumors about me and I became paranoid. I thought that all my friends would believe her and that they would turn against me. Every now and then, this girl’s switch would flip and she would begin to act like my friend again. Honestly, I believed her every time. It was just a repeating cycle of hurt. My mom was my main source for advice (she still is). I went to her and she told me to be the bigger person. To do that, I shouldn’t listen to rumors, just ignore them like they were ghosts because they most likely weren’t even happening.I kind of took this advice the wrong way and, instead of ignoring, I began to distance myself from everything. I made it like I was living in a glass box. I could look out and see everything but nothing could touch me. This was the start to creating a world, a dimension, of my own.

While I was living in this glass box, I had a lot of free time. I filled it with reading and rereading books, by writing and rewriting stories, by drawing and redrawing sketches (but mostly reading). Doing this, I felt like I was truly escaping the world that was crumbling down around me. Reading, writing, and drawing were the lights in the dark for me.

Present day me still draws, reads and writes whenever I need to. I think that following my belief is a positive thing for me. It drowns out all the negatives in my life. My mom always taught me to stay positive and strong through all the dreadful things. To conquer the bad, I would have to stay positive. I plan to follow this motto throughout my life just like my belief.

In short, I chose this belief of mine in hopes that someone can take something from my experiences. To show someone a better way to escape than to hurt themselves or others. Anyway, to avoid making this a PSA (because that wasn’t the assignment), I found an escape during a dark period of my life. And I believe it worked. It was a true escape.