It was the start of Year 4. I had just turned 9, and I stood tall, possibly due to the minor growth spurt I had experienced over the summer holidays, but definitely because I now felt bigger and better than everyone else. We were finally allowed our own pencil cases, we got computers, we belonged to the top playground, and we felt superior to the rest of the school. It’s safe to say I finally understood what it felt like to be ‘on top of the world.’

And academically, I was no different. I was placed in the ‘smart’ class for Guided Reading, which definitely inflated my already humongous ego. Reading was quite a simple task for me, and I was quite the stickler for correct grammar (which I probably got from my grandmother, being an English teacher and all) so naturally, I excelled in the comprehension tests and the reading tests, placing me in the top part of the cohort. I wasn’t necessarily the best reader in the grade, and I did stumble over my ‘s’s and ‘f’s, as you do, but I considered myself quite the bookworm. If my crammed IKEA bookshelf didn’t indicate that, my iBooks app certainly did (lets just say there’s 162 and counting).

Of course, being the top class meant we needed to be challenged, and so came along our very first long chapter book: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Now, books themselves don’t usually scare me, particularly this one, but reading 17 whole chapters was quite intimidating, to say the least. It was very daunting for a 9-year-old, and while I was absolutely petrified at the fact that we had to read a book with such… long… chapters… I rose to the challenge, my ego once again, expanding. I was determined to finish the book before the rest of my class.

And this was totally achievable: finish a chapter;

Chapter 1

Mr and Mrs Dursley of Number 4 Privet Drive were proud to say that they were very normal, thank you very much...

and another;

Chapter 5

Harry woke early the next morning. Although he could tell it was daylight, he kept his eyes shut tight…

and then another one;

Chapter 15

Things couldn’t have been worse. Filch took them down to Professor McGonagall’s study on the first floor, where they sat and waited without saying a word to each other…

Until I finally made it to the battle between Professor Quirrell and Harry (Chapter 17, for reference), at which point, the book ended in victory, like they always do. My teacher was quite proud when I told her, and this fuelled my passion for reading even more. The sense of achievement you gain after reading 300+ pages is one that is unmatched (even to the idea of simply being placed in the top class like Hermione, I always had to be the best.)

Throughout my junior school years, I grew to love Guided Reading more and more. It wasn’t the hardest subject in the world, and I often found I excelled at it. Transitioning into high school English wasn’t particularly difficult either, the ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ assessment task of Term 1 granted me a solid 95%, which led me to believe it was smooth-sailing for the rest of the year. But it wasn’t. Once we reached Term 2 of Year 7 and our second assessment came along, a ‘terrifying’ new challenge arose: writing.

also known as: my mortal enemy.

Throughout high school I’ve always suffered when faced with creative writing tasks, essays, basically anything that wasn’t reading. In preparation for most assessments, I would consider myself relatively stressed, in comparison to my peers. But this stress was nothing, compared to the way I felt approaching English. The endless thinking, writing, typing, creating that one has to do all for the exam to boil down to an hour of my life was something I was not (and am not) prepared to deal with.

And surely, you would expect someone who generally gets ‘As’ in English to be absolutely amazing at writing, but there was my dilemma. I simply couldn’t do it. There was no way for me to reach the (seemingly unattainable) standards my English teacher had set for me. Reading was something easy for me, it was simple, it didn’t require any actual thinking, and that’s something young Elena found comfort in. Writing however, was a drag, and probably the most difficult thing I have encountered over the years, and definitely not part of a goal that seemed remotely achievable.

But, reading allowed me to escape; travel to Hogwarts, Camp Half-Blood, Malory Towers, anywhere my heart desired. Writing was a weight, dragging me back to reality, forcing me to face my fears. It was a task where I had to think, where I had to use my words, where I had to put pen to paper. (Which really, when you think about it, isn’t the most difficult thing to do, but I find it completely unbearable)

Writing seemed to be the source of all my problems; but the ironic thing is; how could something that is the source of all my problems, also be the thing that provides me with my greatest escape from reality? The one thing that allowed me to travel far away, to experience stories and a life beyond even the unhinged thoughts of my younger self.

Reading to impress my teachers, to complete assessment tasks, to excel at English wouldn’t be possible without writing, a paradox I must force myself to face. (Yes, cliche, I know.) Young, 9-year-old me wouldn’t have had the escape to Hogwarts that I was able to experience, the 20 minutes of reading time every night before bed, the countless hours lost to travelling and living vicariously through all the characters I was privileged to read about.

While I still feel the drag that writing places on me, the pain it brings (I would quite literally rather burn my hand on an iron) when I am forced to put a pen to paper, to keep reading means to keep writing, and one cannot happen without the other. I feel I must channel my younger self, my inner Hermione, and continue the cycle that reading and writing forged for me.

And so, I write.