i wonder if there are only a definite number of words God allots to a person.

when i first started learning how to write, like the other kids my age, our textbooks showed us the correct forms of the letters of the alphabeth. my teachers corrected my grip on the pencil and i began to approximate the letters i see on my books. practice makes perfect. the blue and red lines on my pad paper guided my lines, and i made sure that i never go over the lines.

i graduated from print to cursive. cursive a's are hard because my pencil had to make that big circle that's slanted just so and then go down to make the tail curved just right.

once i got the writing down pat, and my teachers stopped correcting my handwriting, i started mixing things up. first, i wanted my handwriting to look like my mom's-- which was perfect in my eyes, and because sherie could do it effortlessly. but my hand can't seem to get those curves and peaks and loops just like my mom's and eventually i found out that my capital letters look just like my dad's. so i wrote in all caps and got tired of that after a few years and started mixing capitals and lower cases. then i put bubbles over my i's and j's, then stars. then i changed my a's and g's to look like the ones on the typewriters. and i've stopped trying to meet the lines on my notebooks. instead, my words floated between the lines.

those years my friends started calling me weird. they left me alone, in a respectful and friendly distance, allowing me some space. i wrote in my own world, furiously printing my reality on old notebooks. i kept those notebooks in boxes under my bed, no one's allowed to see them except for me. i quickly abandoned any story that's been read without my permission. my handwriting changed according to my stories and how long i'd been writing. i enjoyed the loops, and the lines, and long graceful stems of my letters. i liked it even better when my words stretched for as long as they could. sometimes a four letter word can be a couple of inches long.

in college, i preffered unlined pages. i'd buy blank books and write tiny lines of words on them. i liked the feel of the depressions the force of my hand and pen made on the otherwise smooth pages. i loved the look of squiggly lines filling the page from top to bottom. sometimes i'd draw-- trees, bottles, stars, and the moon-- breaking the lines of words and just enjoying how they'd look. words enveloped me in my college years. i felt safe and secure with them, no matter how hard it eventually got, i knew i was where i was supposed to be.

now, my words appear on the screen of my computer. i don't even have to look at the keyboard anymore. i don't have to scratch out mistakes, instead, i just press the delete button. my fingers glide almost effortlessly over the keys and the rhythm of the click clacking keys urge me on, encouraging me to churn out more words because it sounds so good in the silence of my world. nothing beats the feeling of finishing an article after hours of work. a fresh page printed out, with its clean lines and margins and paragraph breaks, is just a work of art.

my handwriting's still good, though i hardly write anything by hand anymore. i am now a writer by profession, i have my own laptop, and two desktops at home. 

but i also have a blank book i bought from a stall in florence, italy, that i should have just given to my sister since i only wrote on its first ten pages; a leather bound journal with acid-free paper given to me by my more recent ex-boyfriend  with its first few pages sealed up; and a small notebook for notes at work. but my hand is too tired and it's getting harder and harder to squeeze out words to write on them.