On Trying To Fill The Space

A non-mopey examination of feeling "not enough."

I write too much.

I don't mean that I create too often. In fact, I don't do that enough. I mean that when I write, I write mountains.

A part of me can't help it. I like the way vowels nestle into consonants and I like that the alphabet is the mother of a million worlds. On any given day, I have two to seven favorite words. Today, they are (in no particular order and for no particular reason) ache, swallow, and petrichor. I have on more than one occasion been late to something because there was a spark in my mind and I couldn't risk leaving home without recording the fire.

Basically: I have an obsession.

Normally, I'm all for [healthy] obsessions. I'm of the school of thought that if something makes your heart bloom, you should chase that thing.

For me, that thing is writing. I've graffitied countless notebooks and margins trying pin down things like how the world works and why people are the way they are. Given my support of [healthy] obsessions, I never saw a problem with this habit. In fact, I commended myself for my ability to fill so many pages. Go me, amirite?

Sort of, but also not. You see, I've come to realize that there's another part of me that writes for a not-so-commendable reason: writing offers a really convenient hiding place.

I'm human, and therefore I'm broken and boring and inarticulate and lost. Don't worry, I also know I'm cool and great. But that's not that point. The point is that even though I can acknowledge that I'm all of these things , accepting that fact is, simply put, super uncomfortable.

I've found it damn near impossible to swallow the pill of my own inadequacy. So instead of doing the responsible thing (which would be cracking open my own chest and exploring the weird caverns hidden in there) I've spent a lot of time hiding from the scary and placid and unworthy things about myself.

People assume that writers (and artists in general) are religiously self-observant and brutally honest. I can't speak for anybody else, but I just have to confess something: a lot of the time, I'm faking it. A lot of the time, I'm pulling tiny crumbs of honesty and wonkiness from myself — things that are true, but also don't hurt all that much to admit — and presenting them as crazy revelations and self-realizations.

Maybe it's that I'm inherently dishonest. Maybe it's that I'm scared I don't have anything actually interesting to say. Maybe it's just that I'm still learning. Probably a little of all three.

The point is that I write too many words for the same reason I always text back promptly, keep a relatively active Twitter feed, and spread myself too thin: because I'm terrified that if I say or do something simply and honestly (or, even worse, if I don't say anything and just exist for a while), it won't be good or eloquent or meaningful. It — and therefore I — won't be enough.

Dramatic, I know, but it's where I'm at.

I've tied my identity to my writing, and so I care a lot, which in turn makes me write more words than I probably need to (or should).

I scramble to make things meaningful.

I say a hundred sentences hoping that one or two of them will hit the mark.

I apologetically dissolve what I really mean in a solution of allegories and analogies, hoping nobody will care enough to pick away the meat and see the trembling bones of whatever I'm trying to admit.

It's not that I'm inauthentic. I'm just trying to fill the space.

I know this is an abrupt and uncomfortable place to end, but I don't have a conclusion. Sorry. It seems appropriate, though, to sum this up with an effort to say more with less words. So:

I'm trying. It's not working out too well so far, and a part of me definitely wants to give up; to break eye contact with myself and just write a shitty novel or something to fill whatever weird hole is in me. I promise I'm not trying to erase this feeling. I know (and love) that writing will always be wonderful but also slightly disastrous. I'm just hoping that one day this feeling will change from being paralyzing to being only slightly distracting, like a pile of laundry on the floor. In the meantime, I'm just tryna show myself some grace.

And that's it.