I woke up with a stuffy nose and a heavy heart; it was spring after all. As I sat down to write, I started staring out the window, my focus blurred as I fixated on a thought and temporarily on a spot of dust on the glass. I was near-sighted by choice. I only cared about the present moment or, at best, the next day. I did not have a plan. I could not make one. I was lost when it came to what would transpire in years, but in every day, in the quotidian, in the what happens right after I have a thought, I was found.
I mulled over writing, over how it was probably not the best vocation to pick up; that if I were wiser when I first wrote a sentence out of sheer overwhelm and no other reason, I may as well have picked a brush or even a camera. While there were always going to be words, something told me there would be fewer and fewer writers. There was a difference. There was always a difference. This thought washed a wave of terrible loneliness over me. I was mocking myself. I did not pick a pen up. It called out to me all those years ago. The pen only called to the loneliest ones of them all. It only called to the ones who could brave it and, if required, who could brave it alone.
All I had was my will, which I had in tremendous amounts. I did not know which ancestor I had to thank for it, but it was the only quality I was proud of; all else faded. This unshakeable resolve I had in me was how people remembered me, if they did at all; it was how I remembered myself, too. It was a curious problem: to have enough drive to power an entire generation concentrated in one irrelevant human being. You could not make friendships on the pretence of some scene, some faux attempt in the name of pushing each other, quite simply because you didn’t need it. That was not to say I did not need friendships—only that befriending someone for some placard inspiration made me nauseated.
All that said, artists like me, we only became examples—more often of not what to do than a gold standard to aspire towards. At least, we became something. There was solace in that much alone.