Dinner has been eaten, the dishes have been cleaned, baths have been made, and children are now set free to bathe and clothe themselves. This means I have about an hour before motherhood notices my absence, so I decide to join my husband on the couch to catch up before that happens. He asks me how my day was, and as my brain skims the chaotic second grade field trip I chaperoned, the prissy ballet class afterward, and the voicemail from my doctor I purposefully have not yet listened to, there is only one thing I want to tell him about. All day it seems, through every attention demanding experience, there was one little girl on my mind.

I noticed her as soon as I walked into my daughter’s classroom this morning, she was sitting in the back row in between two of her friends. Although she had others around her, talking to her, engaging her, she seemed somewhat alone and disinterested in their presence. She had a notebook in front of her, and although she was not drawing, nor writing, anything, it was obvious to me that in the blank pages in front of her lay all of her thoughts. Taken aback by the look on the little girl’s face, I am afraid I could read her expression all too well. It saddens my heart to see the curse of a writer take on such a young little girl. The only thing I can think is how I must explain to her what is happening, why she is and feels the way she does, and help guide her through the misery that the art of writing bestows unto a person. I can tell by the look in her eyes that as her pencil will sharpen and sharpen, so will her mind, and so will her eyes when they learn to cut through the humans of this Earth, seeing only the innermost filth and sins we are all made of. I can tell that she too, will become one like me, and that although she is only eight years old, her destiny to live in a world of crowded solitude has already been decided.

Imagine this, with every single interaction you have with your friends and family, your brain reads into each of their words, your eyes watch their body language, your own tongue lacks the ability to communicate the thoughts in your mind, and you are kind of thankful for that. It seems that every single time, after every single conversation, your brain concludes a response that you would not have had in the midst of the original conversation. You lock yourself away, thinking, crying, venting to a notebook or keyboard, and the next time you are faced with the same person or topic you are left wordless to the tongue once more. You speak only through your fingertips, seeming to be less intuitive than most. However tidal waves of details you notice every single day rush through your mind and overtake your ability to sleep. You read into people and their actions, and you consider why they do the things they do, you ponder life and death and the reason every single heart on this planet must fall in love only to fall out at some point or another. Imagine living a life of so much observation and desire that it seems like every time you look forward to something it fails, and everytime you fall in love with someone they leave, yet you get your hopes up again and again and you fall time and time over because unlike your mind, your heart is so slow to learn you fear it may be suicidal. 

With all of this said, now imagine feeling this way and living this life and realizing that nobody in this world knows this about you. There are no words to explain this, and even if you find them, no one will listen. The fact that there is nothing you can say or do to  be understood by your family or friends in this cold, dark world is unequivocal, and you know this, yet it is so very hard for your fragile heart to understand. You covet solitude, yet fear being alone. You write and write, and finally publish your heart in the form of Times New Roman for all to see.. Only to realize your voice is just as mute on the computer screen as it is verbally, and that you are invisible. My heart breaks for the little girl in the second grade, as her friends laugh and joke and talk to her, trying to include her in their conversation, and she sits their alone, wishing for someone to know the words to say that would speak to her innocent and troubled little soul. She just wants to be understood, but little does she know, a writer never finds understanding… Not of himself or herself, and not of the world, and nobody will ever understand a writer. The curse of a writer takes and takes, and all that is given back is written text that may or may not be cherished long after the day that our physical hearts stop beating on.

“The precuneus is the area of the brain that shows the highest levels of activation during times of rest and has been linked to self-consciousness and memory retrieval. It is an indicator of how much one ruminates or ponders oneself and one’s experiences.

For most people, this area of the brain only lights up at restful times when one is not focusing on work or even daily tasks. For writers and creatives, however, it seems to be constantly activated. Fink’s hypothesis is that the most creative people are continually making associations between the external world and their internal experiences and memories. They cannot focus on one thing quite like the average person. Essentially, their stream of ideas is always running — the tap does not shut off — and, as a result, creative people show schizophrenic, borderline manic-depressive tendencies. Really, that’s no hyperbole. Fink found that this inability to suppress the precuneus is seen most dominantly in two types of people: creatives and psychosis patients.”

Delistraty, Cody. “The Neurological Similarities Between Successful Writers And The Mentally Ill.” Thought Catalog, 21 Mar. 2014, thoughtcatalog.com/cody-delistraty/2014/03/the-neurological-similarities-between-successful-writers-and-the-mentally-ill/.