I have always been a bit too quiet, a bit too awkward. Because of this, having to move frequently was very troubling for me. No matter how many times I changed schools, speaking to strangers always made my head spin. I hated crowded places, and I hated those “fun” socializing games that we were forced to play in the beginning of the year. Frequently, people told me to speak up. According to them, only when my personality changed would I be able to be accepted and feel comfortable in new places.
Yet, the problems with my quiet personality worsened when I moved to Morocco.
Unlike in my previous schools, where I had eventually been able to settle down, I never felt at ease in Casablanca American School. As time went by, my shyness, the rampant middle-school drama, and the lack of students who spoke English drove me more and more away from my classmates. From then, I grew increasingly anxious about my personality. I began to worry that my personality would always prevent me from feeling accepted, no matter where I was.
It was also during my time in Morocco that I started to read more often. Since the day I realized that the school library was usually empty, I began to spend more and more of my lunches there. The library was small, and there were not that many books, but it was the place where I felt at ease the most. I still remember some of the books that I read, especially Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, which I read over and over again.
I loved Speak’s protagonist, Melinda. I loved how she was not pretty and how she was isolated and lonely. My love for such pathetic characters, the characters that held some of my traits—awkward, unsociable, jealous, sensitive—and yet were still somewhat lovable, pushed me to fill my head with stories of my own.
And from then on, I began to believe in stories.
Whenever something bad happened, I let my mind drift away, imagining that someone, or something, would appear and take me away from where I was. I bought a bunch of ratty orange notebooks, the cheapest ones in the school store, and filled them with my writing. My stories were usually terrible to the point that I refused to read them afterwards, but this did not wipe away my love for them. Every time I read another book, wrote another story, my worries about my personality—about how “acceptable” it was—melted away, little by little, until they diffused into nothing. Soon enough, my worries were replaced by a strong sense of conviction that swept away the pressure and the insecurities that have been plaguing me for years.
It was okay if I was the “quiet girl”. It was okay if I wasn’t what other people wanted me to be.

I liked living in the world inside my head, and I liked spilling out my feelings in my ratty orange notebook. I felt more comfortable when I was weaving my bubbling thoughts and emotions into fragments of fictional stories than when I was out there, forcing myself to speak when I didn’t want to, to stay in places that made me feel uneasy. I felt at ease when I was hiding behind fat novels, letting the stories wash away the detritus of anxiety in my head, letting my own stories sprout from the nourished soil. And that was all that mattered.

After this realization, I never worried about my personality again, nor did I ever question if I should start going to parties or deliberately talking to strangers. Even now, I continue to let my actions be guided by my belief that stories and daydreaming are the best way of getting a sense of belonging, a sense that I am not alone. I continue to believe in the power of stories.