Damn, Cee, I can relate to this so well. I have dealt with the bullying (tbh, I think kids just target the more sensitive/impressionable kids, because they know they'll get a reaction from them), which was made worse by growing up in a very unstable household with an abusive parent, two close relatives committing suicide, an alcoholic family member, yeah I could probably go on with my list, but all I really want to discuss about my life is... Frilly cakes! Why don't we just talk about those! And it took its toll in recurrent depression, which comes and goes ostensibly at random every 2-3 years, but I'd like to pretend it never happened during an off-phase such as now.
I don't know if I started writing to help me deal specifically with these things, or it was simply something I enjoyed and was good at, if the opinions of schools teachers are a reliable indication for this. In the midst of general hell, there was one thing that was good, and I felt confident about, and I enjoyed, so of course I kept doing it. My closest childhood friend is this girl I wrote a "book" with. (It's hilariously bad, but we were 13 at the time
)
I wrote and read anything and everything throughout my childhood and adolescence. Then I came to the US for college and the headcanons just stopped. I didn't have any ideas and didn't feel the need to write anything for almost 10 years. Now I think it was because my brain was getting rewired and re-adjusted to the new culture and new language. I spoke and wrote well when I came here first, well enough to get me through college, but it was very stilted and not creative. It took a long time to get that "playfulness" with the English language that I took for granted with my native tongue. I still write things very slowly, and wonder if some of the expressions I use are weird, and some of them probably are, but Solas helped me get back to the point where I dream and come up with ideas and feel the need to get them out. So he basically reinforced my connection to the fade
And to me that's honestly worth all the Solavellan hell I must endure.
Honestly, most of the time I don't worry too much about how well I'm doing. I feel that adrenaline rush when I'm inspired to write something. As long as that feeling is there for 90% of the chapter, I often feel like it's a good chapter. I think I'm at the point where I should probably get more analytical, take notes on what works and what doesn't and hone writing as a skill, but everything in its due time.
One day when I'm 190 years old and looking back, I know I'll have created something, and something is left behind me. That's a lot in itself.