But First, I Must Die

Almost like a caterpillar.

And so, to write a novel, I’m thinking, I must temporarily die. I think I’m finally ready to die. Younger me would hardly believe it. Well, this is my first step, the first cut, the start of my death, is writing to you. I’ve been so plugged into the internet I can hardly see anymore. So many opinions, so much pressure, so little air. I can hardly breathe. I hardly even write. And so, I can’t wait to undergo my own death; sort of something akin to a caterpillar dying to turn into a butterfly. I hope I’m a pretty butterfly. I hope I have big wings. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything. I wrote an excerpt of my novel – the novel in which I tore down and completely changed, uprooting the past eight years of my work because I deemed it insufficient. Insufficient. The perfect word for that novel. It’s gone now; it’s been gone for months, in fact, and I’ve made absolutely no progress since then. I’ve thought, that maybe I’m just not meant to write a full novel, maybe I’m meant to write in fragments, a little brain spillage from time to time, and say what I think, all stream-of-consciousness like, and slap that on paper and maybe even one day, say that it’s art. But a novel? Ah, that’s too much spillage. Can’t spill that much of my brain and be okay afterward. Can I? Though, this concept of stretching myself thin, both physically and mentally, is always persistently banging the back of my skull. Almost like it’s my fate to write a novel and spill everything in my brain and maybe die too. Then maybe the rebirth happens after. Maybe the recharge is next. And I feel full, both physically and mentally; I feel full, and so maybe I do need to spill. And, of course, I must do everything in extremes.