Humility sucks. Egoism sucks, too. But what sucks worst is selling out to things you've really never wanted. What sucks the most is not being able to write. Every day, I write. But it all sucks. I keep telling myself I'm going to sit down and write and not stop until I get my genius back. And all my fucking relatives, asking am I writing? I can't stand it. I want to write, but it's like I'm having a hard enough time thinking at all. An integral part of my life is my confusion. I can't remember the last time I actually completed a project. My writing used to be my rebellion from the institution, from the family, etc. Now, they're the ones who are looking at me, saying, "Are you writing?" I wish they'd get off my fucking back.
I'm fighting very hard. I'm not going to lose this. I remember Ms. Whitney, a student teacher who I showed my poetry to, telling me that I must never let myself stop writing. And the same thing at the writer's workshop I went to. And then it happened. And no matter how much I write, now, I don't feel any magic in any of it - just a kind of suffocating desolation. It's like I've got so many things to do in my life, and I'm way behind and I can't forgive myself for blowing anything off.
I've still got everything else. I've got the dreams, the idealism, the thoughts of death, the creativity, the soul, the faith - but I haven't got the fucking channel. Not for the words. It doesn't matter whether I'm a waitress or not. It doesn't matter whether I'm with A. or not. And maybe those things have changed things for me, but it shouldn't be like this. I have so many things that I want to say, and I can't get any of it out. I just want to scream and scream and scream or die until I can start over as a child.
Thousands of lives. Thousands and thousands of souls. And I'd like to be the one to die each time in her teens. Childhood, over and over again. . .
(Sept. 1987)
