The Day I Named My Passion

“This piece of writing has a few odd spots, so I’ve corrected them to make it easier to read. Please submit it again.”

That’s what my Japanese teacher said when I showed her my essay. For some reason, those words have stayed with me even now.

Huh? Where is it odd? Isn’t that just a matter of preference? I didn’t have the courage to talk back. But I felt as if the writing I had worked so hard on had been rejected. I held back the swirling frustration spreading inside my heart and swallowed my words.

—Maybe that was the moment. The first time I realized that I liked to write.

I think it was the moment I realized that a “like” had truly sprouted within my heart. But I pretended not to see that “like.”

Because I felt that writing was about “exposing oneself.”

Exposing oneself is embarrassing. It felt like stripping myself bare and leaving that version of me out in the open. To my younger self, the feeling of “embarrassment” was far greater than the feeling of “liking” to write.


So, I pretended not to notice that “like.” Even though my heart was aching, I tried to just walk past it.

I don’t have to show it to anyone. Even though I thought that, the feelings for “writing” that I kept quietly in my heart had overflowed many times before.

I tried reflecting my heart just as it was in a notebook I showed no one. I ran my pen across the page again and again, trying to somehow put into words feelings that had no name. Even so, in the end, I would always quietly close it.


Because it was embarrassing.

My feelings toward “writing” were always accompanied by as much embarrassment as they were by affection. “Writing” and “embarrassment” were like twins holding hands since birth; they never left each other’s side.

But now, I want to gently pull those two apart. I want to be honest about what I “like.” If I can, I want to turn that “embarrassment,” along with the emotion itself, into “confidence.”

The feelings for “writing” that I had secretly loved for so long could no longer be contained. Finally, I was able to say “I love you” out loud. Not to anyone else, but first, to myself.


“Marriage to writing”—when those words came to mind, I knew I didn’t want to yield them to anyone else. Because those were words that only I could weave. Perhaps in that moment, I gave a name to what I “like.”

The feeling of not wanting to yield was the beginning of my love.

From here on out, I will continue to scoop up the small, star-candy-like miracles that only I can find, and weave them together in my own words.