It came down to this, in the end: you're killing yourself, in a very subtle way.
It's hard to explain to someone who has never met me, or to those who've come to know me in the past ten years, which includes my partner and my son, and most the people I surround myself with. Hindsight suggests that was pathological, and who am I to argue with hindsight? I've had an obsessive love affair with hindsight, he knows me better than I know myself. So when hindsight rears his ugly, lovable head and says with much conviction, you're killing yourself, in a very subtle way, you listen.
Once upon a time, long, long ago and far, far away, I used to write things. The bits that people read they liked, or pretended to because they liked me or wanted me to write more so they'd have more to laugh about behind my back, and encouraged me. I was startled by the meager amount of success I attained and, in true form, took the first setback as proof that this was a doomed venture and hightailed it back into the woods (I've done this before: an unexpected belch during a third grade choir practice silenced my voice for anything other than sarcastic remarks and comedic howling; a particularly abrasive instrumental music teacher was reason enough to forget about music entirely in high school.) Writing, or smearing pencil scribbles in ten-dollar novelty journals was a last-ditch attempt at creative output, and at the first sign of trouble I retreated.
If you haven't figured out by now, I'll tell you outright: I'm mostly a coward.
A paranoid, neurotic, self-loathing coward. From time to time I'd stick my nose out and sniff at the air for the scent of a predator or critic, and if it seemed safe enough I'd nibble at my nails a bit and shit out a few pages of inconsequential scat. And that's what it was: the leftover waste, what I considered the least worrisome and easily dismissible and ultimately forgettable. It also was excellent evidence to support my conclusion that whatever I did have to write was useless, and writing was a waste of time. As judge and jury I sentenced this....past-time to death row, hoping it would die on it's own in solitary confinement, and handily knocked down each half-hearted appeal over the years.
That worked, for a while. At least I thought it did, but then cracks began to appear under the surface, like a piece of pottery poorly fired. An off-hand comment from a superior at work; a new friend, knowing nothing about my past, suggesting I should try 'putting something down on paper'; an old friend, calling out of the blue and from across the world with a simple query: "Are you writing yet?"
It became a pattern, then a rhythm, with a regularity I could set my watch to, and I was terrified. I felt a little like Scrooge. Even if this past-time was dead, it was not gone and it still made itself known, and shook it's ghastly chains like Jacob Marley. Like Scrooge, I doubled down on my denial and made a perfectly fine list of reasons to ignore the clanging of the bells ringing on their own accord: you have nothing of use to write, it is all self-referential tripe, you will only embarrass yourself and your family and humiliate yourself in the future, you have no great knowledge or lesson to impart upon civilization, writing is just public masturbation wrapped up in paper and Times New Roman, good writers write only for money, even if you did write all that you would find is that you are not as interesting or as pretty or as funny or as sane as you need to believe you are to function in society, and before you know it you'll become a crude, crazed caricature of yourself as a quote-unquote writer and hate yourself even more, and become completely useless to everyone.
But here's the thing: there are limits, even to self-loathing. Even to cowardice. And when you get to that point in which you look around and you're thirty, you have a lovely house, a good partner and a darling child, and you can appreciate the value and inherent worth in all of that and are beyond grateful for it, but you feel like a walking black hole, it means that you need therapy and strong anti-depressants something has to give, and perhaps leaving nicely packaged, inoffensive bundles of written shit in random places like a lazy dog-walker is not enough, perhaps your fine list of well-stated reasons is not enough, perhaps "Humbug!" is not enough, being a vacuum is no longer enough and it's killing you, slowly and in a subtle way, and it's time to agree to the visitation of the three spirits, to bare your ugly, embarrassing, intellectually stunted self because what you are is more meaningful than what you pretend to be, even if what you are is humiliating. It's useful, because it keeps you alive.
And that's why I'm here, taking up your time.
Of course, some therapy and anti-depressants probably couldn't hurt, as well. These things aren't mutually exclusive, you know. Nothing ever is. And that's probably the most profound and stupid thing you'll get out of me right now.
Thanks for being patient.
(image from Alastair Sim's 'A Christmas Carol', via Blue Ruins)
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