Hi/Assalamu 'Alaikum ya'll.

Buckle up, because this is going to be a long and cheesy post.

This July of 2021 marks my 10 years on Wattpad.

Yes, 10 years. I'm officially the resident Grandma.

How I discovered Wattpad is an age-old story. The journey began when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth and I came across this platform called the Bathroom Wall on Facebook.

I'm not sure how many of you're aware of the existence of Bathroom Wall, but I can tell you it was a strange, strange place.

So Facebook once introduced this forum (or something) where users could post stories. The layout was kind of like a forum, people made these posts and those posts could be followed, liked and commented on.

There was very little regulation on Bathroom Wall, and people there posted anything starting from anecdotes from their own personal lives to snippets of their crafted fiction. The place was active for a few solid months, and I had a fun time there while it did - before it became a ground for perverts.

Naturally, Bathroom Wall was shut down. During the small window of period I spent there, I stumbled upon a vampire story (don't troll me, I was most likely a couple years shy of entering my teens at that time). Understand it was about the time Twilight was just beginning to gain fame so that was a new thing and it definitely had me on the hooks!

The vampire story lured me to where the author was originally posting the story, and I followed it all the way to this other website. Thus began my era of Quizilla.

Quizilla was the place to be back then, okay! It had quizzes, discussion forums and most importantly - plenty of free books. It's then when I adopted the name makeitmatter - more like stole it, if I'm being honest.

So you see, the author of the vampire story was writing in Bathroom Wall under the username of - you guessed it - makeitmatter. When I came to Quizilla in search for her/his story, I decided to use the name she/he was using previously for reasons, that are beyond comprehension for my now adult brain, but somehow made sense to my teenage one.

I spent several quiet afternoons of my life just reading on the Most Popular section of Quizilla. We didn't even have individual devices back then - just a shared computer. That didn't stop me from displaying Vampire/Bad Boy stories on the gigantic screen of our desktop. Can't tell you guys how many books I completed there while my Mom watched Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi on our television in the background.

Anyways, Quizilla soon started dying and a lot of readers and writers started migrating to this other place (which I would later discover to be Wattpad). As more and more writers began to move here, I decided to check it out too, and truth be told - I didn't like Wattpad at the first glance.

It was too plain. Too boring. Now that I think about it, Wattpad is just more professional - perhaps why a lot of writers preferred it. Anyways, I didn't enjoy reading here back then, Quizilla was a lot more ~hip~ and teen friendly.

Quizilla was shut down soon after. Simultaneously, I was losing interest in the online reading practice since I was growing up. I was in my mid teens at that time, and my real life became a lot more interesting than the books I was reading. Even though I didn't really read online anymore, I still decided to create an account on Wattpad in 2011, just in case.

I didn't read online for years. Wattpad just didn't appeal to me, and I had too much going on in my life to look for another place. From time to time, I would still peek in. Maybe I wasn't an avid reader, but I also never really left.

I think it was that sense of a community that kept me pulling back. Books like White is for Virgins and writers like Jordan Lynde have been here since them Quizilla days, maybe even longer. I think to some extent I feel like I grew up with this community, hence why I felt the need to check up.

In about 2015, when I was going through a lonely time in my life, I was searching for some comfort and I found myself back here on this website. I typed in the word Muslim on the search bar and thus discovered the Muslim community here.

Thank God abusive men weren't quite as trending back then because I, once more, started spending all my afternoons on Wattpad. I didn't know really anyone or have any friends. But I guess books containing characters who lived in similar societies/family settings as I do provided me the comfort and support I was looking for.

As I read Muslim/Islamic books on Wattpad, I also, for the first time in my life, felt the urge to write my first book.

I think while reading books with Desi culture, religion and POCs, I was able to  relate to the characters on a deeper personal level. Before that, I never encountered a main character with a Muslim or ethnic sounding name, nor described to look like me - on or off Wattpad. So I never really thought writing was for me (this is why representation is so important).

In 2015, I wrote my first book. I have since taken it down the because it was mostly trash. It was so bad I cringe when I even think about it. But man, oh man, did I enjoy writing it. I was so incredibly proud of it that I forced a couple of my cousins to read it too.

Even though my first book was a total embarrassment, so was my second, and third - I realized I actually enjoy writing. I could tell I was a bad writer, but that didn't stop me from writing. I refused to give up. I kept writing - determined to get to the stage where I would consider myself to be a good writer - and in the process of learning to be a writer and posting my crappy work, I made a handful of friends that I've truly come to cherish over time.

Wattpad has a special space in my heart - and I guess it always will (though these days when I'm scrolling through reading lists, the titles of the mass population of books make me think, "what in God's green earth am I still doing here?"). This place is a reminiscent of my teenage years. It has witnessed my growth as a writer, as well as a person.