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Balance

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I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was 7 years old. My Year Two teacher, Miss Thompson, left me a note on my English project that read: “I hope one day to go into the ‘P’ section of the library and find a book written by Nataly Perez”. It was and still is an effortless pleasure and gives me a deep sense of satisfaction. Moreover, it makes me happy and fulfils a certain portion of my happiness like nothing else.
Keeping journals was never really my thing; I didn't like the expectations behind it. Write about my day? What if I don’t want to remember how I failed that maths test? Can I write about what I wished my day had been like instead? I was a big fan of fiction, in case you hadn't noticed. I preferred to write fragments of stories inspired by thoughts or music or vivid emotion. I still write like that, reveling in the freedom to experiment with form that writing allows, particularly when driven by pure emotion. It is an undeniable truth that writing is inextricably linked to my happiness and the composition of it.

I guess the first time I really thought about happiness was when I thought I had lost it. It only crossed my mind when I realised that perhaps my butt was so numb because I’d been sitting on the bathroom floor for the last hour and a half watching myself cry in the mirror. Teenage angst will do that to you. I say teenage angst but I really don’t think I was such a bad teenager in the grand scheme of things. I declared my eternal love for a boy and fought for weeks with my parents to let me stay at his house. Explaining to my dad that this was forever seemed entirely plausible at the time and I genuinely saw my relationship as hugely mature compared to the fights I would overhear my parents having when it came to gardening or Bunnings. Confessing to your boyfriend that you’re feeling really shitty a lot of the time and it may be entirely due to your living situation at fifteen years of age seems a lot less dramatic over the phone, in case you were wondering. I had my own room, my own phone and- God forbid- shared a bathroom with my sister. You could see it was beyond unreasonable.