The Answers

There is something absolutely exhilarating about therapy. Whenever I come back from a session with John, I feel as though I am levitating. Everything is a little clearer. I have always felt that way, even in the beginning when things were a little heavier, when there was much more to sort out. The amazing thing about it is: the answers. There is an explanation for almost everything, usually a simple one. One that would have eluded me because of where I come from. All of a sudden, things make sense and when they do, it is much easier to move on. Eventually, there comes a time when you realize that you’re not that – crazy - anymore. Then the therapy becomes more about polishing the corners than rewriting the past.

There is also the fact that this person has known you from the worst on. That person is on your side. He wants you to reach your full potential and he will cheer for you when you achieve it. If for no other reason than the gratification it provides him for having done a darn good job with you.

I was discussing my powerlessness towards the novel with John. He helped me realize that one of the reasons I had not been able to write a word thus far, was because it went from being an amazing project to being a job. I didn’t have to impose myself a strict regiment as to when and how many words should be written in a particular time frame. It took away the joy and the pleasure of the action. But it also became potential for failure. Because every time I failed to write the required amount of words, I felt like I was failing my project. And nobody wants to feel like a loser. And the guilt generated prevented me from even writing on my blog. Ultimately, I stopped writing altogether while all I ever wanted was actually to write more.

The moment I understood that, I started writing again.

I read recently a book introduction by a famous Afro-American writer who said that from the time she was a little girl she felt a stranger in her family and her hometown. She added that nearly all writers have experienced that feeling, even if they had never left their native city. It’s was a condition inherent in that profession, she suggested, without the anxiety of feeling different, she wouldn’t have been driven to write. Writing, when all is said and done, is an attempt to understand one’s own circumstances and to clarify the confusion of existence, including insecurities that do not torment normal people, only chronic nonconformists, many of whom end up as writers after having fallen in other undertakings. This theory lifted a burden from my shoulders. I am a misfit; and it seems that there are others like me out there. I have never fit in anywhere. Not in my family, not in my hometown, and worst of all, not in my own culture.

And although my childhood was but a formidable mass of misery and complexes so tangled and perverted that even today I can’t quite understand them all, even with John’s help, it appears that there aren’t too many wounds left that time won’t be able to heal, time and a bit of help.

So if chronic nonconformity is the key to a great writing career, I guess I am still in the running for this Pulitzer Price after all.