Another, 1

“In each of us there is another whom we do not know.” Carl Jung

You must write every day to save your life. if you do not, your mind will get the best of you. You will think these dark thoughts. You will fall into such despair. You will give up. You are not an artist, get over yourself. You are an artist. You were born into a family that did not understand artists. You will never be understood. The fantasy lately is to be saved by a fifty two year old novelist with a great head of hair who wants nothing more than to give you a child and love you, and he understands perfectly that you will leave him in twenty years for someone younger. He is OK with this. He would be lucky to have you. You will always be in pain. Emotional pain is sexier and more literary than physical pain, but you will always have the physical, and no one wants to hear about it. Perhaps you are far more fucked up than you are willing to acknowledge and that you ever let on. You should be on medication, and you should be in therapy. You mind is not integrated. You are unwell. You are an alcoholic. You hate February, but then when April rolls around you quote T.S. Eliot, so you hate April, too. You hate life and you love life. You should be lecturing to high school students or else writing for a magazine or else writing novels. People would like them. But you don’t, because you are afraid and no one believes in you, especially you. You want to skip the horrid soul sucking rough drafts and get right to the final, the hardcover on the shelf. This is impossible. You have so many stories – why aren’t you telling them? Because they aren’t diverse. Because they aren’t politically correct. Because writing sometimes sucks, is very hard, is very annoying. Because you are afraid. You don’t like food that much anymore, except for sugar. All you want to eat is sugar. It was so important to you for a time to be beautiful, but you are wondering if you even care anymore. What does that accomplish? You’re not a model, and no one cares what you look like on Instagram. Why do you care? Why do you still chase high school boys? Why do you still live in Los Angeles? Why don’t you make a change? What are you so scared of? How do you think you’ll feel, when your father finally dies, and when do you think that will be? Do you think you’ll feel relief? You were meant to have your writing heard, but no one hears it. Mean girls broke your heart more than boys. You did nothing. Why didn’t you defend yourself and scream? You want to much to be good. You have to do this everyday, or you will never get better. Stop trying to be good. Allow yourself to be messy. Let it be messy. Be a bitch. Be angry. You often pick guys who do nothing nice for you. Find a man who will. They are out there, they will be floored by you. You are magic. You know this. You are full of talent, if only you could find someone to write with. You were meant to write. You were meant to be loved. It hasn’t happened yet, and you think you are old now, but you are so very young. How broken is your heart? Very. It is very broken. Give it time to heal. There is something about you that is luminous. Radiant. Whenever you share jokes with your students now, you’re afraid they’re going to come back with some far left wing ideological retort that will shame you for saying something traditional about men and women. These parents are ruining their children’s minds. It is tragic. Art will be lost, a slave to politics. You fantasize about two men at once. You fantasize about ruining a marriage, being the other woman. But that is not what you really want. You want the glamour and magic of kids, you do not want the day to day. You want the partner, you do not want the irritation and struggle of another. But there is someone out there who will get you, who you won’t be too much for. You are afraid to share this writing, because the deep dark down in the depths disgusting swamp of truth is too much for people to bear, and they will call you dramatic, self-indulgent, treacle, embarrassing. They will not get it. You thought teaching would be artistic and romantic, but it’s stale, sterile, full of type A’s. Where are all the artists. The real ones? What could you do differently? Where could you lighten up and not care? You get tired of being sober, and not because being sober is all that bad, but because getting high would feel so good. It would feel good to get a little high. You feel shame for these alcoholic thoughts, so you repress them. They are actually human normal thoughts. Everyone wants to feel good. You never really let yourself really go. You are afraid it will turn you ugly, turn you to stone, turn you mean, turn you judged. You are afraid of the thoughts of others, which is a sort of insanity, for you will never know the thoughts of others. Thoughts are weightless, unreal. When you finally heard truth spoken from the professor, it was everything, and yet, you do not know him. You feel that no one really knows you. As you write this, you want to publish it on your blog, but with that in mind it controls what you write, and you don’t want that. Everything has become about what this might look like to others on a screen. What insanity. You don’t want a screen. You dream about novels and stretches of beach with a lover. Stillness and quiet. Death, too. Death is romantic. You’re told to see a doctor. No one really understands you. No one really tells the truth. What happened to art? To writing? To stories? Everything is politicized, a postmodern nightmare. The books world is corrupt, like every other world, but that shouldn’t stop you. Why aren’t you writing? You do not finish stories. Every story you start is about two sisters, and you dream about having two daughters, this is the life you did not have? You love so much that it hurts, doesn’t it honey. But you cannot say this love out loud. The vulnerability kills you. It will scare the other person away. Your mother’s hugs were never tight. Your father loved you but couldn’t show it. So you don’t show it. But you feel it, and it’s so deep, it is in the depths. How could someone be an atheist? How could someone choose to believe there is no meaning, when there is so much? How can people be so cruel, so aloof, so manipulative and dishonest? So faraway and unloving? It disgusts you. People disgust you. People are horrible. You would love everyone if only they would be the way you think they should be. This makes you laugh. Have a snack. You should eat a well-rounded meal, but instead you’ll have sugar. Do what you want. We are all going to die. You are so tired of your friends posting about politics. Women in Los Angeles, white women no less, thinking they are oppressed. You are embarrassed for them. You know this isn’t true. People have no depth of understanding of western civilization and the mere fact that they can shout, we aren’t free! is a gift of a free society. And as if men don’t struggle too with pressure and conformity and feeling that they have to be a certain way. As if it wasn’t always hard to be a man, too. As if we aren’t all consumed with guilt and fear and shame. We are alive. The oppressor struggles, too. No one understands anything, because no one bothers to learn and study and read. The world lies everyday, and people only look at the surface. You are angry. And you know what, be angry. You have chronic pain because you pretend to not be. So, be. Instagram is ruining your life. This makes you laugh. Don’t be so dramatic. The truth is that you love and hate deeply at the same time, and this is the truest truth – we are all capable of extremes of good and evil, if pushed to the brink. July 1’s, overwhelming ambivalence. You aren’t proud. You wish it could all be love. But it isn’t. You know why AA works? Because it’s about God, and God is good, God is bigger than the material earthbound surface world. God is transcendent – the head lifted to the heavens, to the stars, to the unknown and unprovable. Not everything is about what you can see and touch, about damn Newtonian laws. Most of it probably isn’t. We’re far older and primordial than that. People in this city are stupid. They lack wisdom. You know you’re right, like Kurt Cobain. Or maybe you’re so wrong. You are every archetype, but mostly you are the anti-hero warrior sister who must fight the bad guy while not becoming bad herself, Arya Stark, Scout Finch, Mina Cates, Eponine. Why not just be depressed and let it all go? Do you have to fix it, right away? Because you have to show up to society every day. You cannot act this way at work and on social media. But why? What would happen if you let it all hang out? With your friends? With your writing? With a lover? With your folks? If you wore lipstick and dressed however you wanted and let go? What would happen if you told the truth all the time and didn’t feel like you needed to censor it or hide it or apologize for it? You feel often that it is too much, your feelings. They are big. You are afraid to scare off your friends. You are afraid to be yourself. You are afraid to love with your whole heart and ask for what you need and accept yourself the way you are and let that be beautiful and lovely. You give far too much power to boys who do not matter. You have very old ideas, rooted and stuck in fifteen year old you, and these must come unglued and dislodge completely from your system. See what happens when you just allow things to be exactly as they are. Just be and allow. See what happens. But, why don’t you figure out who you are? Are you afraid to stop being good? What would happen? Why don’t you just figure that out and be that. Or why don’t you just let it be. Let it all be. But, who are you and why don’t you and what if? But, who are you and why don’t you and what if? But, who are you