In the truest form of procrastination, I’ve spent the past few hours combing through old documents on my computer, burying myself in unfinished pieces from years ago.

3 years ago, I was a freshman in college. I was 18 years old and had just suffered a miscarriage. My second in just a few short years. I was devastated. I was heartbroken. Understandably, I felt very alone.

So I wrote.

I always thought the whole concept of sitting in the window, staring out at the world, was a cliché. The whole outside looking in picture, mixed with the idea of rain as some sort of symbolism, always felt forced to me, like something people act out in movies, but would never consider doing in the true scheme of things. I know now that I was wrong. For as I sit here, perched in my windowsill, staring out into the world, all covered in rain, I cannot help but feel a sense of belonging.

To what, I’m not entirely sure, but I find myself running through a string of images in my head, of movies I’ve seen, of TV shows I’ve replayed, in which people were depicted in this very same position, feeling relatively the same things as I find myself with now. So a sense of belonging to something bigger than myself, I guess. Which is good, because as I sit here, in my lowly college dorm room, I understand why our windows don’t truly open—because if they did, I may just jump.

You may find yourself at this point now, where you wish to stop reading because you don’t want to hear something this depressing, but curiosity wins over because, let’s face it, you want to know how the story ends.

Sorry to ruin that one for you, but this story is just beginning. I’ve been here before, you see, six years ago or so. But back then, the windows opened, and the view outside came at much higher a price.

For this, I tell you, is the story of my life. Granted, I’m only eighteen years old as it stands right now, in the late fall of two thousand and twelve, but I can guarantee with little doubt that I have lived through more in these past eighteen years than most do in their entire lives. Most stories don’t deserve to be published, don’t need to be committed to paper, and I’m not necessarily saying that mine is any different, any more worthy, but I am a writer; writing is what I do.

How else could I have made it through my life, I ask, if not through writing? For writing is a release, sometimes the only release. In a world of endless pain, impossible hope, and just life, sometimes you need a release, even if it is as routine as words on paper; or as screen, in most common cases these days.

Like I said, I may have jumped if I could. I watch the river of water forming from the puddles in the street, and I picture myself floating away with the raindrops. It seems so peaceful, so much more realistic than my hope for a “pause button” on life. I could become one with the rain and just float away. But I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, for the people I’d leave behind mean more to me than my own life, at times.

The first time I read this today, my heart ached for the girl who wrote this. It doesn’t feel like me, I’m completely disconnected. Then I read it again. And again.

And I could see more and more of myself between the lines.

I know that blurb isn’t much. In fact, the document it’s contained in goes on for quite some time. But for now I find this piece the only bit worthy of publishing.

I am not the same girl who wrote those words.

I am 21 now, almost 22. Shortly after I wrote that, things got better. I married my best friend. We built a life for ourselves. Time has healed many of the wounds that were so raw back then.

Immersed in my senior year now, it’s difficult to walk once again in the shoes of my freshman self. But difficult is good. Because it shows progress. It shows strength. It shows growth.

I want to remember the girl who wrote this. I don’t want to lose her.

Because she survived. She thrived, in fact.

And she is me.