Writing used to be my escape tunnel, dug with a single stainless spoon over a period of time--decades, maybe--through a brick and mortar prison wall. On the other side, I could see things impossible in my dingy cell. I could run around in that beautiful world, creating something from nothing, seeing pure greens and blues unaffected by reality's shadowy presence.
I always had to come back. My cell was unguarded, but a prison nonetheless. What kept me there? The fact that long periods of time spent "outside" had a tendency to stretch my sanity thin when I returned. What's missing here is the explanation of why I had to return at all--I don't have an answer for that yet. I'd come back and continue to act as if I were still free, and nothing I said or did made any sense to anyone but me. I started to wonder if my field trips were excursions into the realm of lost minds. I had days when that idea scared all the imagination out of me, but I also had days where I was perfectly all right with it.
How many writers go crazy? Stark-raving mad magicians of words, creating something out of nothing, who delight in making readers feel deep emotion, using only 26 characters that only mean something because they said it did. Are writers insane? Are they hypnotists? Are they as weak as anyone else, or have they tamed insanity--put it on a leash and named it eccentricity?
As a general rule, they are all required to be slightly egotistic at the very least, even if it only stems from living inside themselves for too long. Am I thinking of eccentricity? Probably. But that requires being egotistic to an extent, so I'm sort of right. They're all--as far as I can tell--very particular about their pens and paper. Or their typewriters, or word processors. Line spacing, how the page looks when it's full, is very important. They'll rip a masterpiece to shreds if it's not aesthetically pleasing.
I know I do. I have done so. But they probably weren't masterpieces.
What is my problem, then? Why can I not identify with that group who calls themselves writers? Out of fear that the moment I do, it will become false? This is true, it's what I think--but it's false. I am afraid of what that label will mean when I stick it to myself. Afraid I won't live up to it if I call myself a writer before I really am. Afraid of disappointing everyone who heard me say it. Because outside of scheduling writing courses, it's always been my little secret. Because if I know it's going to be read before I write it, those poisonous thoughts will fill my head and smother my ideas. That is a fact.
So it's safe to say my problem lies in not being eccentric enough, because I give more than a shit if what I write is liked or impressive.
What's upsetting about that is that it goes against every bit of advice I've ever given to anybody. It goes against my mantra, if I have one: "love yourself, or no one will." I've preached this since... the birth of my self-awareness. That summer day in the daycare pool when I realized I wasn't exactly stunning in a bikini. It snowballed from there.
I guess I figured if I said it to enough people, they would believe it, and I would, in turn, come to know it as a fact about myself. This thought has been my crusade, to a point of absurdity, to a point where it has come between me and significant others.
What convoluted logic! It merely points a gaudy, blinking arrow back to my insecurity; that it would take others' opinions for me to love myself, and that can't happen. It can't hinge on others. So awful it is, that for most of my life, I've known that the louder someone shouts "I AM THIS", the more likely it is that they're not.
Deep down, I wonder, am I just a pre-pubescent chubby little girl in a swimming pool full of judgement and self-loathing? Are the things I write all just metaphors for what I wish was my psychic condition? What happens now that I know this? Is it possible to change, to accept myself untethered, without losing my mind? Or is that just the way psyches are built--interconnected, reliant, dependent on each other; and anyone who says theirs is otherwise is preaching doublespeak?
Do I change?
Or do I just stop preaching my own contradictions?
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