Sonia Montalvo

Ad-lib Sonia Montalvo

Two months before my first published book What If I Fly? released, I had stepped down from my first journalism job after a year and a half on the news source's team. I had grown tired of it. I wasn't producing my pieces out of the love of writing anymore. It had become a daunting task, and it was adding more stress to me than relief. My life was changing drastically, and I didn't know how to deal with it. Managing depression, a break up, and career path changes, I became a person that I did not know anymore. I was literally afraid of mirrors. I didn't want to see myself. I was irate, confused, borderline suicidal, and overall lost. I cannot count how many nights I laid in the bed unable to sleep because I could not make my brain shut up. But in my bouts of raw emotion, writing was the only thing that saved me, the only thing that kept me sane.