An Open Letter

I feel ridiculous for writing such a letter, but when things are to be written, they are written, whether their recipient acknowledges the words or not. I’ll keep this short as I can.

It’s just. . . Gods, it’s over. This is an epilogue.

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A little about myself. Though I am only eighteen, I’ve been writing for twelve to fourteen years. My first “story” was actually a play written on giant drawing paper. My second “story” was a nine-page novel about sea serpents that I was completely sure would win a Pulitzer Prize. I loved the story for the story. I wanted to be a great writer and so, for twelve to fourteen long, lonely years, I embarked on a quest to be good as possible. I was the author of spaceships manned by dragon-men, of starpeople singing brightly around the cosmic pool

Things change, and they change badly, but throughout the years it was so slow, so imperceptible to me, that I only first noted it when my fervent interest in dragons waned. That should have been my first warning, when I stepped into my room one day and realized I hadn’t written a story about dragons in years. Dragons were and are the very source of inspiration. All great artists have drawn from the primordial energy that is the great serpent.

Then, year by year, worlds I’d created and characters I’d come to know faded from view. Planets crumbled. Magical beasts fled for more verdant pastures. The pool where the starpeople once sat was now algae-scudded, profoundly ruined.

That was, perhaps, a year and a half ago. The rest of me has broken now. I can blame it on a part-time job at a fast food joint and adult life, but I need to be honest with myself about these mechanisms that have conspired to ruin the only part of my identity I’ve been able to hold for all these years: my identity as a writer.

Now the writer writes, and the reader reads, and I don’t deny that I am both of them. But there’s a difference between a Writer and a Reader and a writer and a reader. Coherent or not, I have become resigned. Dreams are beautiful things to reach for; without them, the human race would not have progressed nearly as far as it has. Yet a dream is a ship, always with a few passengers who miss the departure time. I stand here on the dock, the last of my dignity feathering to dust.

I have accepted the fact that I am a fake. That I am an amateur. That I am a hack with no unique ideas, energy, determination, or skill. I accept the pillar of my identity has been based on colossal ignorance, which in turn has led to equally colossal loneliness so that I take pills to stem the neurotic behavior I’ve developed from it.

I believed I had an exceptional gift: a natural ability at writing. How can I believe I have any talent when people write for five years, only to perform spectacularly, and I write for near fourteen, and receive nothing but blood in the palm from neglected roses? I was able to delude myself for a long time, until school, work, and adult engagements made me realize only special people get honors, make the performance. I am not special. So very few of us are.

I’ve spent nearly my entire life alone. Days my peers gathered I squirreled myself away in my room. Became a recluse. I studied humanity from the outside. Bit by bit, I gained the ability to portray the world through words, while my ability to communicate with it myself atrophied. How many nights I curled alone in bed, thinking about my stepfather’s gun! How many times did I stutter awkwardly at a request for my name? And how many times did I hide whenever someone new came into the territory I had so poorly marked for myself!

Since I’ve realized the error of my ways, I’ve been able to communicate better with my fellows. The communication is hollow. Look at these people—they don’t have the magic, the feeling, the resonance I used to find in the characters I created for myself. These people don’t know my heart and don’t care about the dreams that used to be. To find the intelligent is to find the snob, or overachiever. To find the humble is to find the dull or the recluse reclusive as me.

Yes, I am humbled. I am the dimwit sidekick on the Saturday morning cartoons.

It’s my time. I have nothing to look forward to except a dreary life of school, work, and maybe TV. I don’t know if I can get into TV. Frankly, I don’t see the point in it when I have books.

Books. Yes. The final sanctuary for this hack. Only, these days I want to read the old books. I want to read Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Bhagavad-Gita. I want to immerse myself in Ray Bradbury, Henry Kuttner, Isaac Asimov, and Phillip K. Dick. They are everything I want to be yet can’t. Especially Bradbury. Nights, I read one of his books until I fall asleep over it. I’ve ruined at least three Fahrenheit 451s that way, drooling on them, I mean. It doesn’t matter; I buy a new one. I buy and buy again the faded memories. No, I don’t mind sleeping on my books.

Because when I sleep, I dream again.




I think I'll go away for a long time, drop things I was doing, give up on enterprises I've already begun, no matter where I am on them. I think I'll try, for once, to let my grades slip, to waste countless hours in front of a TV screen. If that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do. Maybe I'll run away somewhere. Even if there's no such thing as "running away".

See you guys on either end of the proverbial bridge. I have faith in you. Keep it up.