On Being Legally Blind: Why I Started Writing
Remember Livejournal? Or Xanga? Or even Google’s Blogpost? I had them all. I was in my early teens and never posted more than twice on each account, but there was something thrilling about the possibility of talking to the masses through the internet.
“Hey, world! It’s me Shabnam, your average middle schooler. I’m not sure really what this blog is going to be about but thanks for being here!”
That’s how the first post on each blog would start. Eventually, we all moved on to Myspace and Facebook, and my craving for self-expression took the form of wall posts and statuses. On the internet, I was able to express myself in ways I wasn’t able to in school. I was shy and quiet, and having gone to the same school my whole life, it was hard to break out of my mold. So I kept taking to the internet with my words, but I never considered myself a writer.
I made my first website in 2011. It was a portfolio website for my photography, and by 2012 I’d made a blog for it. I would write about my travels and my anguish about graduating college. I wrote about my projects and my ideas, my legal blindness, and my life in LA. No on was reading but I still chimed in with my “Thanks for reading!” as if they were. Still, I didn’t consider myself a writer.
