The pen is loudest when our voice is silent. Every writer has their inspiration, their muse. They write to spin a story, to get an idea or point across, I write to speak. Living in a home that feels more like a barless prison; where you have little to no voice on matters of your own life, takes a toll. So I write.

The thoughts that keep trying to push their way out of my mouth and fly free in the air, flow freely onto my paper. My pen is louder than my voice ever was. Thoughts that I only wish I could tell my mom, are stopped by a wall called culture. Speaking out against her for defending my own beliefs would be interpreted as disrespectful. So I remain silent, not daring to utter a sound. All I can do is wait until I’m able to spread my wings and finally feel the freedom and independence I’ve craved for for so long. Until then, I write.

It seems that as I grew older, the worse my home seemed to me. It felt like the walls shrunk, little by little, almost like it was trying to suffocate me. The one sided yelling matches between my mom and I grew more frequent as I gathered more courage to speak out, but it wasn’t enough. She always found some way to stop me before I even got started. I was learning to speak out against her, albeit a little late, but better than never. My writing got shorter as some of my thoughts were voiced.

As I wrote, my world expanded without my knowing. I went back and reread some of the things I had written, and realized that my thoughts had changed and shifted their focus. Instead of writing about my prison-like home I began to write about the world. Interacting with my friends and finding out their views on subjects got me thinking about what my views were. I slowly turned my attention away from my own problems, and started thinking about the hardships that others go through. What was once an outlet for my unspoken thoughts and silent words is now a way in which I record what I learn about the world through my own eyes and of the others around me.

As Henry David Thoreau once said, “How vain is it to sit down to write, when you have not stood up to live?”. Now I sit down to write what I have lived to see, and let my voice be louder than my pen as it should be.