Girly magazines, New York Times bestsellers, green mud masks, chick flicks, etc: all things to which my immediate response for years was to turn up my nose. Now I’m thinking there just might be something to it after all.

I think writer’s block could be a good thing. It’s the only thing preventing the world from being flooded by pointless prose that simply was not meant to be.

I think I possibly sympathize too much with the characters in the fiction I write (or have written in the past, or have attempted to write) for the stories to really be any good. I want too badly for them to all get what they want in the end that I can’t bear frustrating them. Even autobiographical works, I tamper with, to make them end just so…

Judy Klitsner attributed the above quote to Martin Büber, even though Googling has yet to confirm this. Her talk came at a particularly opportune time for me, especially given the content of the preceding post, and I can finally put some of the thoughts that have been shapelessly traversing my mind for weeks into words.

The destruction of a person is in saying, “You are,” without allowing him to say in response, “I am.” This has been an ongoing problem for me for quite some time. The struggle has always been that I must convey myself in some way, to explain to someone else who that “I” is more than it is to explain to myself. I know who I am, without a doubt, but if someone else who has not interacted with me on a personal level wants to know who I am, they must take the fragments I give them and fill in the rest of the details.

All I need to be able to say is, “I am,” and no one can say it for me. And yet, people try to understand, and they respond, “I understand. You are these things,” and all I want to say is, “But there is more!” The struggle is always the intrinsic loneliness, the impossibility to connect totally and not a few times have I wished that someone could, for just a moment, know what it’s like to be me. But at the same time, do I really want this? Because in that moment, there is no longer a singular “I.” And so I am somehow endlessly entrenched in this duality.

Sometimes I wonder, what is the use of even saying this? Do I not become just another person who bemoans being stuck in yet another box? Yet I am I, an individual created to be a unique voice in a community of unique voices. The ultimate faith, the proof of unity, is in the singularity, which I must believe with all my heart and all my soul and all my resources. For if we are created singular like God, and we cannot believe in our own singularity, how can we believe in God’s? And, likewise, if I know that God is unique, how can I but know that I am, as well? While the logic seems circular, it’s not meant to be a philosophical proof of anything — no, simply a structure that, given one, allows me to lean upon the other for support.

It occurs to me that my recent trials have been — whatever their original intention or lack thereof — a test in self-actualization, an exercise to bolster myself in this aspect and to strengthen me in a way that no force beneath the heavens can tear me away from myself. And, for the first time, I don’t need a string of “I am”s to define me — those are never sufficient. I just am, and I am more than satisfied with that.

Sometimes I think if I wrote a book about my life someday, and it wasn’t worth reading, then my life might not have been worth living. On the other hand, if everything goes exactly as I expect it to, the book wouldn’t be worth reading. Intensity of sensation, conflict within and without, on occasion all seem to fall into a mold of banality, and when they do, who really wants to hear this tired story again?

EDIT: I think this is by far the most depressing thought I’ve ever had.