Sylvia Plath effect

Now Playing: The Story of Us by Taylor Swift (I'd tell you I miss you but I don't know how, I've never heard silence quite this loud)

Here's the thing. I don't write when I'm happy. I just don't.

I mostly sleep, to be honest. As an introvert, spending time with people - even people I like immensely - is exhausting. I liked going from one bed with someone to my own bed, alone, curled up, just swimming in my happiness. I don't write. Nothing comes.

It always worries me that I don't write when I'm happy, that my best stuff comes when I am miserable. It's not just blogging; I wrote one of my best essays after screaming myself to sleep and then begging my friend to write with me at uni, an impromptu date that I showed up to wearing jeans and a T shirt with vodka in a water bottle. I needed to take a walk every hour to focus. I was hungover and miserable and frustrated. But I wrote something I'm really proud of.

Lately the nights have been rough. They've all been lonely, but these past few nights have been truly terrible. And, at five in the morning, with sniffling and bawling, I open my laptop and write. I always get these explosions of creativity in times of grief and trauma and despair, and it scares me; because I've defined so much of myself and my life as a writer, and it's my main marketable talent and the thing that people seem to like and value about me. But what if I'm happy? What if I'm happy and it disappears?

This is why I dislike being put on a pedestal so much. I know more than anyone that all this shit could slip away at a moment's notice. I feel like Gatsby, and I feel like people love and criticize me on the courage of Gatsby's liquor. But when the manor burns down and the car crashes and the gun is fired...will anybody love me then? Nobody loved Gatsby then.

You might have gathered that I'm not doing so well. People want to meet me, but I can't bring myself to go through with it. I have this horrible image of comparing them to the golden past that existed nowhere but in my own head; but it's still nothing people could live up to. I just sit here, alone, in my cold room, in my cold bed, licking my wounds. I think of all the things I've left behind, I think of all the broken promises. I don't hate anyone; it's too exhausting. I forgive people for being young and stupid because I hope they can do the same for me. But I can't forgive the pain. Because, make no mistake, I am hurting.