On Writing

I watch Prozac Nation and Elizabeth Wurtzel and I think: I could be her. 

All of it. Or at least I could have been. 

The prodigal, encouraged, youthful writerly ambitions. The book smarts. The utter disconnect from peers, feeling somehow deeper, darker, better than those around me in an elitist artistic rendering of half-truths and an excuse for isolation. 

Music critic for Rolling Stone? That should have been me. 

Mounting depression and multiple suicide attempts before the age of 23? Sometimes I wonder why I escaped that tenuous path. 

You feel crazy if you don't write. 

You feel crazy if you do. 

And then you don't feel crazy enough. 

Succumbing to the darkness is an initiation or validation of sorts. 

You're not an artist until the words bleed from you in some fashion. 

Until your room mate, lover, professor or mother finds you subsisting on cold, week-old coffee and days have passed in which sleep and showers have been cast off in exchange for finishing that last sentence.

Making it perfect, then scrapping the whole thing and starting over. 

There are no recovery groups for addictions to pen and paper. Ink and tree pulp.