For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind... That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough. - Franz Kafka
It's been a really long time since I've written anything substantial; so much has happened in the past year or so that I haven't quite found the words for yet.
I remember a time when I was younger in which I decided I would write an original story. Like every kid who loved to read, I harboured aspirations of becoming a writer. How hard could it be? I thought, There must be about a gazillion possible permutations of character and circumstance; surely there is a story that has yet to be told.
But in place of inspiration I quickly discovered a dullness. The inelasticity of my own imagination astounded me - I was unable to devise a character who did not bear a distinct resemblance to myself and whose internal processes were not patterned after my own. I would struggle to cough out words - only to choke them back down when I realised they were my heart's deepest.
I've heard it said that fiction reveals more about a writer than non-fiction. Soon the thought of having a cross-examination of my innermost thoughts thinly (and unconvincingly) disguised as those of an imaginary persona was unthinkable. The process of writing became too risky, too invasive; offering too much exposure and too little defense, and, by then, I had already grown too insecure to allow it to become second nature to me.
I found I couldn't write from a place outside myself, and outside myself was the only place that seemed worth exploring.
So somewhere along the way I decided that I wouldn't attempt a story until I could recite my own, in first-person, as a consistent and continuous narrative. Not out of principle or anything, but out of an incapacity to do otherwise. I couldn't make any sense of another life until I had of my own. Until I saw the tiny bubble I grew up in burst bright upon the sharp edges of the world.
So nine years ago, I thought I'd start a blog, and write myself into it - just like how I would a story. I later found the term for it - "confessional" writing - but to a twelve-year-old girl it was just putting words to feelings. Words understood better than people, it seemed. They were better listeners; more sensitive to subtleties of expression and shades of meaning, more discerning.
I'm twenty one now. And language has somewhat lost its lustre - tarnished, it often reveals beneath its sheen a hollow, full of meaning but devoid of truth.
With every year that passes, I grow more certain of my limits, more uncertain of my merits and altogether afraid to think for myself. The thought that a year down the road, what I pride as knowledge could be put to shame and what I perceive as insight could be pronounced redundant often deters me from attempting to know anything at all. To write anything at all.
But I've missed writing: the pen-point precision of words in pinning down those vague, meandering thoughts onto a surface - on display, visible; the way that language concretes concept, giving it outline and character. And I've found that I now read effortlessly-worded prose with a strange, sinking, sentimental envy. It made me think what envy really was - the bitter-tasting remnant of a life un-lived. A raisin in the sun.
So maybe it's time to start again, recover in part the necessity that writing once was to me for the sake of re-discovering how words can really heal. And continue inwardly on the search for Truth, deepening my course always in hope that I would arrive, in the end, somewhere proximal to her core. Because there is great freedom within the bounds of great grace.