Tonight I sit wearing a solemn face of half-smudged tears. My hair drapes considerately over black scars of mascara. Am I a memorial to bipolar tendencies? A monument depicting the emotionally unstable? These lips, cracked open from the weather, bitten by more than the wind, are they indications of nervous breakdowns? Because this week has left me wounded, has left others wounded. Has left me finally, in a familiar state of singularity. "No, I'm by myself." "Yes, I'm here alone." And how can I explain that all my life I have struggled with normality because I seemed to have missed out on stability. I wonder if my drama is an inbred talent of imagination. God knows I must someday be a writer. I have not yet decided whether am I satisfied with this prediction. Though I love it, love leaves me hungry. But what would I do without words? Convey every last adjective with my eyes? What a riot of fluttering that would be.

Something has been missing in my life for a very long time. And I believe I am just not beginning to see its impact, not only on myself, but others. I have not written faithfully for a while. Stories never get completed. Photographs never developed. Some days I look at my hands with the paranoid stare of Lady MacBeth and am inclined to wonder if the blood of my murdered muse will ever dissolve. And religion. There is always religion. But above all, there is God. I love him an ineffable amount, but I am afraid my affection has rusted. I know him to be my one source of joy, yet I have noted a change in myself, that I am more ravenous than usual, and at the same time, more desperate to share what fulfillment I've found. This I do very poorly.

I am bitter that I aspire to be an intellectual. That while I enslave myself to the realm of essays, my friends report back on lovely evenings. That while I have to work plans are made that know nothing of my name. That my friends are now friends themselves. And while I was once the mutual link I am now unnecessary. Furthermore, this is all upsetting. That it must continue, that somehow, due either to my exceeding ambition (doubtful) or incompetence to accomplish tasks quickly (most likely) my intellectual attempts are slow to ripen. There is also, the dread of admitting that those who have come and gone in my life can no longer be counted. But what does any of it amount to? My essays cannot comfort me. I am cannot possess the ability to comfort others. I, myself, find little comfort in anything.

Such questions have been awaiting their birth for years. Because it has occured to me that all my areas of interests involve isolation.

First there are the poets, the idealists who swoon over flowers with such tragic appeal that even the sunshine compels suicidal bouts. Every blade of grass exaggerated to new heights so that beauty is no longer microscopic but overwhelming.

Next are the mature prose writers, whose love extends onto endless pages detailing the life of the alienated heroine, the deranged woman isolated from society. Jane Eyre with her mundane aesthetics prohibiting inclusion. Edna Pontillier unable to escape conventions. These characters comprise a litany; on and on their woes rise and fall in choruses, in verses that seem at times inherent to me, as if years ago I had staged them all, written every great novel and suffered through their songs.

Of course philosophy surpasses all sadness. My beloved existentialists disregard absolute meaning. They trade in God for man. Others precede them, questioning the content of every concept. Reason intervenes. Logic prevents. We know too much which allows us to admit to knowing too little. And once we've realized that there is no end to the search, we find it hard to ignore, unsatisfying to pursue. I am intrigued by the idea that everything close to my heart has no substance whatsoever. That I comprehend very little, yet am frustrated with attaining the complimentary sorrow of cognizance.

Artists must speak without the aid of definitions, babbling only in countor and color. They are all crazy. All the good ones at least. We are tricked into believing insanity is a means to an excellent end. Is it? They endeavor to save the world by way of smooth canvases, dark rooms of dimensions, virtuous brushstrokes mirroring expression. Or, they create for no real conviction other than to document, to elicit beauty.

But is this not beautiful? The quest for knowledge, however meaningless? The love of objects, however temporal? The affinity with sorrow, however sadistic?

I would never wish for ignorance. But it is such a burden to be so attentive to loneliness at such a young age.