Working On Anything New?
They ask me if I’m working on anything new. I am. I always am. They ask this, despite not having read the last book. Or the one before that. I try to figure out why this is. Why ask, if you have no intention of consuming it. I’m not sure you even care, and you don’t have to care. I don’t ask about your work for this very reason. I don’t care. We don’t have to care. But asking me that question makes me think you do care, and then I have to find out you don’t. This is why I’m mostly happy to talk about anything, but get awkward when you try to talk about my work. Because I’m reluctant, hesitant of this inevitability – finding out that the work means nothing to you. You’re just feeling the silence with questions until we’re drunk enough to not feel uncomfortable.
I pick at my skin. I always have. My chest is covered in pucker-marks and scars, reddened skin and blackheads that never needed to become infected. I can’t help myself. Lately, I’ve noticed that it’s significantly worse when I’m stressed. The skin n my chest a field of war, reddened from pinching and touching, trying to squeeze out the imperfections. It’s always worse then, when I’m overwhelmed, or uncertain, or lost. A reflection of my low self-esteem. Last Saturday we went to the beach. It was hot as always. I left my t-shirt on because I didn’t want you to see what I’d done to myself. The physical manifestation of my anguish. I know you’d never say it to me, but there’s a chance you’d talk about it after. ‘What’s going on with his chest?’ You’d be disgusted by me. My attempts at perfection are revolting. There’s something universal in this, true of attempts at perfection in every context. The cosmic irony of perfection.
I’ve done this forever. I don’t know if it’ll ever stop. It gives me a feeling of control. Unsure of so many components of my life, I can sculpt and prune my skin to make it perfect, to feel like I am doing something right.
I’m not a sad person. I know this. I feel this. But there is a sadness in me. I’m not sure it even belongs to me. It has latched on like a parasite. But our relationship is sometimes synergetic. The sadness gives me this ability, the ability to write to people, make them feel seen, less alone. I don’t know if I could do any of this without the sadness. Other times, it doesn’t do anything but push people away. People mistake me for a sad person because I write so seriously, so earnestly. I can’t be anything but this, have nothing more to offer.
This path requires spending long periods of time in one’s own head. This is something we generally pathologize. Being in your own head is a bad thing. Does that mean that this is a bad thing, this thing I obsess over? Would it be easier, overall, to leave all of this go? I don’t know if I can. I don’t know who I am without this. I don’t know who I am.