Welcome to my blog, this is but the first post in an ever ongoing saga that is the Snowball Rolling Project. Snowball Rolling is myself, it is ideas, it is writing, it is writers. It is the hope that with one good idea, greater ideas follow. It is my life and my dream; to write, to write well, and to make things with words that have meaning, that touch people, that continue to make a difference in ever expanding circles beyond my influence and control. It is the hope that we can all become something greater, and that this greatness can spread peace.

This is my story.

I, Melia, began writing as early as I remember. I came from a lower middle class renting family, and in one of our many rented houses there was a staircase that had no panels joining the spaces between the stairs. I would shove my legs between the space and spread paper all across the steps, and use the stairs as though they were my very own private desk. In the middle of the house. In everybody's way.
No one seemed to mind.
I was small, and the stories were terrible ("mister A and mister B went to the park, but were surprised to see mister C who wasn't their friend because he looked funny" comes to mind) but I was encouraged, and my mother bought plenty of paper. Hours I'd spend with my legs squashed through the wood, stapling together my 'books' until my legs got too big and I no longer fit. I'd try and try, but my stair desk days were over. Fortunately for me we had to move, and my pain at no longer having a desk was abated by the new neighbor's friendly cat.
Books were the most natural thing to me. Far more natural than toys or games, because I'd always lived in houses that were full of books. This would be reinforced by the fact that my father's friends had even more books than we did, and helping them move would take several hours of hauling very heavy and carefully packed crates full of musty smelling tomes and volumes. It was quite a surprise to find that none of my friends had even a third of the books that I did, and that none of them spent much time writing, and worse, that so few of them enjoyed it. I would write, through the long years of loneliness and childhood torment, on into adolescence and into, what I am told is adulthood, though I am inclined to disagree.
Certainly writing is and always will be a firm part of my identity, though I've given you little information that would otherwise substantially tell you my story. And the truth is, that writing my story, laying it out there for the world to see, is much harder than I'd initially thought. I can attempt to tell you a few things;
That my name, Melia, was inspired by a Hawaiian girl my mother met while picking apples.
That the name, as she believed, meant 'white lily', but to be accurate actually means 'nymph'. A simple spelling error, Melia instead of Malia, renders it so.
That I am a chronic and compulsive nail biter, and have been biting since my parent's separation at the age of eight or nine.
That I, on occasion, compulsively pull strands of hair out of the line of my part and have been doing so since the age of fifteen. I had, for a time considered that I might have been suffering from trichotillomania though the very mild severity of my doing this, along with my strong will to control this behavior, leaves me inclined to think otherwise.
That I have not, until this point, told very many people about this.
That I, like so many teenage girls, had my heart severely broken at the age of sixteen. Though we all move on, and I have been in successful relationships since this, I strongly believe that we never wholly recover.
That I, though I wish it with all of my heart, do not yet have the strength to reveal everything inside me, and that my secrets have become a large part of who I am.

So here is the real story, a girl, desperate for truth, for honesty, for a life of integrity, gives herself a space to write and hopes that others will find strength from it. From here, my story will surely reveal itself, for in writing I cannot escape writing myself. This is the essence of the Snowball Rolling Project. To bring an ounce of honesty and bravery into the world and to hope it spreads. That one ray of light might touch another and gather, and that through the unstoppable force of ideas a better world can be made.

At the time of writing, I am 23 years old. My birthday is in less than a month, and honestly, I am terrified. In my heart, I'm still seventeen, and as each year rolls on, I'm surprised I'm still going. I never could see myself getting older.

Thus it begins/continues. The Snowball Rolling Project. Ever on into the abyss and the ether.