The assignment was to write a “persuasive creative nonfiction” about a belief that I no longer believe or one that changed over time. This paper had a 4 page minimum that, to be honest, was the longest narrative I have written throughout my entire grade-school experience. I was concerned about how I’ll make it to the page limit without being repetitive or rambling things that may take away from the purpose of the story. My previous papers also lacked creativity and the use of rhetoric, which was the very thing this paper required. So I had to primarily focus on organizing my outline to ensure I successfully fulfilled the majority of the requirements while telling my story with the subject in mind.

Since it was a narrative assignment, I wanted to choose an experience I could write about efficiently and something that I was passionate about and that the reader could learn from. So I decided to write about my experience going through therapy and how before I had this experience, (Shamiah Allaway- Mind is my Enemy). One thing I wanted to achieve with this paper was to experiment with having switches between reality and using imagery to illustrate the depression and anxiety I was experiencing, which I did achieve to an extent. Toward the end of the paper, I lost my flow; I began by using a lot of metaphors, but later on, it became pretty telling. I’m not disappointed, though, because the ending was me talking about how proud I was to overcome my depression.

This paper allowed me to be creative and test my writing limits while being authentic to my personality. I treated this paper almost like a diary entry, sharing my breakup experiences, how it affected my mental health, and my journey to self-love and acceptance without feeling ashamed because it was a personal journey that I overcame.