Everyone has a vice. Some people turn to drugs or alcohol; others pick up a cigarette and inhale deeply. Still more pour their weaknesses into the dregs of the coffee mug.

Usually, more than one vice rules the reality of those engaging in it.

I am not different. I wield the weight of my own vices daily-cigarettes, coffee, and yes, writing. I think I would have an easier time giving up my cigarettes and coffee than ever putting down my creativity. In fact, I am so consumed by my creative vice that it rules every moment of my day. I even found a way to make it my work just so I would  have  a reason to spend hours in front of the computer pounding away at the keyboard.

There are limits to my writing addiction, though. If someone likes it too much, if I feel a piece of my work is on the brink of being successful, my mind reigns in on the breath running freely from my fingertips. I begin to procrastinate, trying to shelter myself from the hurled praise sent my way. I am, after all, only human; and we all know how  detrimental approval can be.

It isn’t that I don’t take pride in my writing or that I want readers to hate what it is I have spilled across a page. It is, in truth, an embedded demon from years past. This demon is cloaked in the mist of obscurity, dancing somewhere in the shadows of a reality so far in the past that no tangible memory of it exists. The reactions to it are still very much portrayed in behavior, but the reasons are long lost, drowned in a sea of such memories that no fact remains as to their origins or their unique defining attributes. They are ghosts, and they cannot tell me from whence they came.

I have two clues as to my writing and creative dilemma, and both are from memories so sketchy that I can’t be sure of the accuracy in either of the incidents. The first of these memories occurred during my fifth grade year. The second one holds its roots on the cusp of my teenage years. They are close, yet separated. They are both during a time in my life for which little memory is left. Those memories that are existent for the time period are fragmented, confused in a haze that cannot be penetrated no matter how long I analyze the few known facts surrounding them.

In the fifth grade, I won a contest for a story I wrote. It was a western, a genre I’ve never revisited. The contest was regional in the area I grew up and combined the student writing talents of several school districts. My story, which turned out longer than it was supposed to have been, took first prize. My teacher decided to enter it after reading it to the class–a task that took two days. I wrote a 75 page story. The assignment was for one page. Back in those days, we had typewriters, not computers, so it was not a story that could be completed and ready for print quickly. I was also eleven years old or so.

The woman who raised me, my first adoptive mother, did not appreciate my efforts or my success in writing that story and winning the $500 prize that went with it. She made it very clear that the effort I’d put forth was not only unappreciated, but also inappropriate. It wasn’t that the story held any profanity, nudity, or other such undesirable subject matters. It was the writing, the mere act of me putting words to page, that she found so distasteful. She believed writing and other such creative endeavors were foolish wastes of time, a sign of laziness and defiance she would not put up with from a child within her home.

I have no clue what happened. The discipline received for the transgression of writing a story is lost. I also have no idea where the prize money went or for what purpose it was used. I only remember that I decided I could not write creatively again…or at least I couldn’t write creatively and get caught. Writing was wrong, but it was worse if the writing earned any type of recognition.

The second memory involves the same woman, myself, and a story I no longer remember. I had not stopped writing, but had taken up the habit to write secretly. Many nights, I would sneak up and tap away on my older sister’s discarded type writer. It clacked, but I was careful and no one heard me in the wee hours of the night. I began writing the story under the beam of a flashlight, being careful to end my forays well before anyone in the house was due up in the morning.

One night, I forgot and allowed myself the luxury of living inside my story for a moment too long.

When she came into the room to wake me for school, my secret was discovered. I was sitting on the bed with the typewriter under the covers and a dim flashlight with batteries barely clinging to life pounding my soul out onto the paper. I was 13 years old.

The only thing I remember is her shredding my story in front of me. Her anger is gone as are the events of that morning. I have no clue what happened to the typewriter as it also  disappeared never to be seen again.

I learned never to write at home and to never, ever, get caught writing anywhere. It didn’t matter if the writing was an assignment after that or not. I flunked English over it as I would not finish any assignment that focused on creative writing in any form.

My high school English teacher could not understand my refusal at doing my work. One morning, I decided to show her I didn’t have problems understanding the assignments. We were given an assignment to write a poem of original thoughts on our world as we saw it. I, of course, did not do my assignment on paper. Instead, I  sneaked into her classroom on her off period and scrawled out my poem anonymously. I painted the turmoil in my soul on that blackboard, but I did not sign my name. I also wrote with my left hand to hide my handwriting from her. She did not know I was ambidextrous.

My teacher tried to learn the identity of that poem’s author for the rest of the year. She copied it from the board, read it in class, discussed its possible meaning, and begged someone to take credit for what she called “this beautiful, soulful work.”

But, I had already learned the errors of being known. I was compelled to write it out of rebellion for what seemed to be the very breath in my lungs. I simply could not admit to it when the poem gained the attention I sought to escape.

She never did find out the author of that poem.

I believe the afore mentioned events may have shaped my distrust of completing work for which attention may have been gained. I believe the lessons the woman who raised me instilled are still firmly in place. I know I have not been under her thumb for many years now. In fact, I have a new mother, one that is everything the first was not. Yet, it is hard for me to accept that my work is acceptable, that it is all right if a piece of my writing is recognized. I struggle each day to understand and to go past the barriers set up long ago for reasons that no longer remain intact.

Of course, these are not my only vices and fears. They are only the ones that found themselves committed to this journal first.

I have many personality traits and behavioral barriers that keep me from reaching my full potential. I am unsure of who I am most of the time. I’ve always been what others have commanded. Now, with a new home, an empty nest, and a different environment, I am on a journey to discover me. I want to know if the lessons of yesteryear can be relearned, if I can succeed and be proud of that success instead of feeling guilty because I dared to write on paper, be it digital or of the tree variety, what I think, what I remember, and what I dream.