Finding Myself as a Poet in Denver

In January of 2013, when I was a senior in high school, I was rejected by the Army and permanently disqualified from enlistment in all other branches of the United States Armed Forces. I had been planning to enlist since I was eight years old and I never even considered the possibility that I would be unable to. I was always in good physical health, I stayed out of trouble, I was born into it. But I went to the Military Entrance Processing Station in Denver and I left as the same civilian, suddenly with no plans for the future.

To me, it felt like I had been wrong about myself my whole life. I apparently wasn’t brave, I wasn’t strong, I wasn’t dedicated. Not enough at least. I felt as if I was going to be stuck as the same person for the rest of my life.

I was months away from graduating high school and I had no idea what I was going to do. In April, received a letter from the University of Colorado Denver praising me for my academic achievement and urging me to apply for classes in the fall. With no other plans, I applied and was accepted. I didn’t feel proud or excited, though. I was embarrassed of my alternative route. I laughed at the idea of me moving to Denver, the city where I lost my dreams, where I was expected to build new ones.

The healing was slow. I thought about how much I was willing to give up in order to enlist: time with my family, my boyfriend, my writing. Suddenly I was able to keep these things and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I got the idea into my head that I still had to prove myself as a brave, selfless, responsible person, so I declared myself a Pre-Nursing student. I spent more nights drinking alone, walking circles outside my dorm chain-smoking in the snow, and scribbling down poems than I actually spent learning how to heal others. I still felt wrong and very small in this city I resented.

I felt like I was going nowhere.

It took me months of lashing out and feeling lost to decide that I couldn’t take on what I had planned to take on in the Army. I was in a different place than I had planned and I needed to take care of myself for a while and the best way I could think to do that was to pursue the only thing I could ever care about as much as I cared about serving my country. That was writing. I changed my major to English Writing with a minor in Creative Writing my second year of college.

Sometimes I still feel disappointed. Some days I even feel selfish. And I know I’ve chosen a path that leads to even more rejection. I do get scared. But I’m writing again. And I live in a city that begs to be written in. I see things like the sidewalk from my 26th floor apartment, a homeless man begging for food for his dog, the crowds on 16th Street on New Year’s Eve and I wonder if I ever could have served without wanting to write more. I lost my chance to become a soldier, but I have always been a writer and now I’m in an environment where I can be.