You are not a writer.
You think you are, but you’re not. You’re an over emotional, highly unstable bitch who likes to think she’s more acutely aware of things than the next person. But really that’s bullshit. You’re just a cynical nobody who's trying to come up with an excuse as to why that is. You blame everyone around you, even life itself, for your own unhappiness, without taking the time to realize that somehow everybody else has managed to get on with it, live their lives and generally just be happy. You have these grand plans about who you’re gonna be and what you’re gonna do, but deep down, you know that their never going to eventuate into anything, because you’re always going to be this hateful little girl who's too scared and too lazy to make something of herself. And then, when you finally figure all this out, your gonna write it all down in your little notebook, thinking that that somehow makes you special. That your tragic little life will have more meaning if you put a couple of words down on paper. That knowing how to write, in itself, makes you a writer. But it doesn’t.
Because you are not a writer. And that little notebook of yours isn’t fooling anyone.
"I CAN NEVER READ ALL THE BOOKS I WANT; I CAN NEVER BE ALL THE PEOPLE I WANT AND LIVE ALL THE LIVES I WANT. I CAN NEVER TRAIN MYSELF IN ALL THE SKILLS I WANT. AND WHY DO I WANT? I WANT TO LIVE AND FEEL ALL THE SHADES, TONES AND VARIATIONS OF MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE POSSIBLE IN LIFE. AND I AM HORRIBLY LIMITED."
SYLVIA PLATH
Then gradually the glow began to fade, and the cold material of his customary life to show through. He resented it. Was he cheated in his illusion? He balked the mean enclosure of reality, stood stubbornly like a bull at a gate, refusing to enter the well known round of his own life.
The Rainbow, by D.H Lawrence
‘In that case, the things I’ve believed all my life - about sin and redemption and the mortification of the body - you’d say none of those things mean anything, wouldn’t you?’I smiled at his seriousness...‘I’d say that you are entitled to your beliefs, as long as they make you happy.’
‘Oh.’ He watched me warily as if I was about to sprout horns. ‘And what - if it isn’t an impertinent question - what do you believe?’
Magic carpet rides, rune magic, Ali Baba and visions of the holy Mother, astral travel and the future in the dregs of a glass of wine...Buddha. Frodo’s journey into Mordor. The transubstantiation of the sacrament. Dorothy and Toto. The Easter Bunny. Space aliens. The Thing in the closet. The Resurrection and the Life at the turn of a card...I’ve believed them all at one time or another. Or pretended to. Or pretended not to.’
‘And now? What do you believe right now?’
‘I believe that being happy is the only important thing,’ I told him at last. Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or torturous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.
- Vianne Rocher
‘You’ve seen so much.’ Her voice was envious and a little awed. ‘And you’re still so young...I’d like to be an adventurer’ she said. ‘To follow the sun with nothing but a single suitcase, to have no idea at all of where I might be tomorrow.’
‘Believe me,’ I told her gently. ‘You get tired. And after a while everywhere starts to look the same.’ She looked doubtful. ‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘I mean it.’
It isn’t quite true. Places all have their own characters, and returning to a city where you have lived before is like coming home to an old friend. But the people begin to look the same; the same faces recurring in cities a thousand miles apart, the same expressions. The flat hostile stare of the official. The curious look of the peasant. The dull, unsurprised faces of the tourists. The same lovers, mothers, beggars, cripples, vendors, joggers, children, policemen, taxi drivers, pimps. After a while one begins to feel slightly paranoid, as if these people were secretly following you from one town to another, changing clothes and faces but remaining essentially unchanged, going about their dull business with half an eye slightly cocked at us, the intruders. At first one feels a kind of superiority. We are a race apart, we the travelers. We have seen, experienced, so much more than they. Content to run out their sad lives in an endless round of sleep-work-sleep, to tend their neat gardens, their identical suburban houses, their small dreams; We hold them in a little contempt. Then, after a while, comes envy. The first time it is almost funny; a sharp sudden sting which subsides nearly straight away. A woman in a park, bending over a child in a push chair, both faces lit by something that is not the sun. Then comes the second time, the third; two young people on the seafront, arms intertwined; a group of office girls on their lunch break, giggling over coffee and croissants...before long it is almost a constant ache. No, places do not lose their identity, however far one travels. It is the heart which begins to erode after a time. The face in the hotel mirror seems blurred some mornings, as if by too many casual looks. By ten the sheets will be laundered, the carpet swept. The names on the hotel registers change as we pass. We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow
- Chocolat by Joanne Harris
Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.
— Chuck Palaniuk, Invisible Monsters
I feel physically ill. My insides are churning, I can literally feel them twisting and writhing inside me, as if my very body is disgusted to be associated with someone so unworthy. I feel like it will never forgive me. Like no matter how much I try and purge away the guilt and remorse, it’s never enough. I ask myself why. Why does it hurt so much this time? This has happened before, and it’s never been this painful - this sickening. But I already know why. It feels different because it is different. Because this time it isn’t some intoxicated mistake that will be forgotten. I can’t just sweep it under the rug and say it didn’t mean anything and therefore it doesn’t matter. Didn’t I, just days ago, force myself to admit that I loved him? And not just superficially. Not in a passing statement, or as an automatic response to something he said, but in a real, heart-wrenching understanding. I am in love with this guy. And I knew that with that came the responsibility of true commitment. Love wasn’t just a feeling, some sensation that we can appreciate singularly. Love was a package deal. It brought with it other things - like trust, and respect, and honesty - whether they’re desired or not. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t pick and choose the rules you want to follow, and the ones you’re allowed to disregard. It doesn’t work that way. And like all rules, once they're broken, there has to be consequences. Whats more, I know that this feeling inside me right now - this nauseous concoction of regret and self-loathing- this isn’t the consequence. This is simply the knowledge that the consequence is yet to come. That this time, I’m going to have to tell him. That not telling him will only break more rules. Honesty, as well as fidelity, would be shattered. And that is why I feel sick. I am full of dread. Dread for both that awful conversation, and his response to it. It is then that it hits me. What everyone had been talking about all this time. Why I had never really understood the term ‘faithful’. Why people had given me those horrific looks when I had said that cheating wasn’t a big deal. Because back then, it hadn’t been. I had never been in love before. I had never had to deal with the whole package. I decided then and there that I was never going to fall in love again. That it was too horrible, too painful; and that no matter what anyone said, it would never be worth it.
