But how can I write when everything has already been said? This truly is the best of times, the worst of times, the age of wisdom, and the age of foolishness, in Dickens’s words. Or as Dostoevsky would say, ‘I’ve destroyed and betrayed myself for nothing.’ I fall and l feel and to no real avail. Because under these dark blue skies, I feel as though I’m in the pits of hell. Because Kafka said ‘I am not well, I could’ve built pyramids with the effort it takes for me to cling to life and reason.’ Because I’m sitting here reasoning with the gods, counting on my fingers, wishing on every star and it seems to me that every plea goes as ignored as a dead man in the sea. And when Wilde said ‘to live is the rarest thing in the world, most people exist, that is all’. He must’ve been talking about me because I try and try to live a great life and I fall face first every single time. And the darkness surrounds me and I fight the fog, but I’m so busy fighting I forget to live. So when Plath said ‘And I dream too much and I don’t write enough and I’m trying to find God everywhere,’ she must’ve seen this version of me that looks for signs in grocery lines and tries so hard to be what everyone wants but I’m crumbling inside. I’m surrounded by echoes of who I used to be, I’m forced into the shadows of what’s meant for me, and I’m so scared that when everything is taken from me, I’ll forget completely who I’m trying to be. So when Camus said, ‘you will never be able to experience everything, so please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself,’ I told him I’d try. I promised I’d find some compromise with this weight on my being that refuses to die. I promised that I’d find joy in walking under street lights, and doing things only I like, in looking for stars on a dark night. Because Nietzsche said ‘to live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering,’ I thought to myself that the least I could do was to make this all worth it. To give meaning to the suffering that would’ve followed regardless. And so I may still try to look for signs from the sky and think to myself quietly that it’s such a terrible life, but I will also look for little smiles as strangers walk by and the soft white lies we tell to dry eyes. Because Shakespeare said, ‘the course of true love never did run smooth,’ and wouldn’t it be such a misery if everything worked out all of the time? So maybe the bumps deserve a little credit for making the smooth parts seem more appealing. Maybe the darkness I’ve learned to inherit is doing more than just some character building. Because we live on a balance, between these extremes, and I’m fighting for a life where I can just be. So I’ll rise and I’ll fall and I’ll wait out the tides that threaten to take it all. I’ll live and I won’t leave, I’ll stay until I’ve made something of me.
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