UC Irvine

When I first starting seriously pursuing creative writing in 2022, my summer screenwriting professor told me that people, no matter what age, are always coming of age. “Even now,” he said, “I am coming of age.” He was and is in his seventies. That stuck with me. Four years later, as I prepare to graduate with an MFA in fiction from UC Irvine, I look back at these three stories I wrote and recognize how much I have changed and evolved as a writer since that summer. Circumstances in my life, too, were starkly different then. Like I, my characters change and evolve (even though it may not seem like it, even though they don’t realize it themselves), and experience acute growing pains, such as: the grief and trauma of losing one’s religion; loneliness of adulthood; existential ennui; friendships that are more than friendships; violations of the body and mind; and more. Deep down, subconsciously, there is suffering. Familiarity with pain does not ease the acuteness of it at the moment the wave hits. It maims and cripples. Yet it is as they say. This, too, shall pass. The degree and intensity dull with time. Heartbreak—like love, like joy—makes up a portion of the full spectrum of life. In a way, all my characters are heartbroken. It is a privilege to write them.