They say Franz Kafka had a tendency to laugh hysterically whenever he would read his works to his friends. I am standing in front of you all, your eyes are staring up at me, and I try to explain what my book is about – but your gazes make my skin prickle with sweat and my laughter drowns out my unease under the excitement and the sheer fear of laying myself so bare in front of you.

Albert Camus said you would never be able to experience it all, so you had to first and foremost experience yourself. He said many other things too, but whenever I think of him, the only thing I can see is black coffee swirling in a white cup, and all I can feel is the scorching sun burning holes in my neck until I finally pull the trigger.

Sylvia Plath said she would never be able to experience it all, but she said it differently. She said she would never be all the selves she wanted to be, learn all the skills she wanted to learn, walk down all the paths she longed for. I look at myself and at the words I write, that reflect the internal conflict that rages quite violently in my mind whenever I try to make sense of what I want, because I want it all. Why choose when I can have everything? But that’s the thing; I can’t have everything. I am so limited. And that, also, Sylvia Plath said it before me.

To define is to limit, but even Dorian couldn’t accept this. Oscar Wilde taught me art, taught me pride, taught me beauty and then taught me how it rots. What if I wait for so long that the figs start to turn, just like they did for Sylvia? What if I don’t wait and I experience myself fully, like Albert, but wouldn’t that be to limit myself? I can’t define my future because defining it would mean to limit it. It’s beyond explanation, it’s beyond anything anyone might have the guts to explain. There’s all of this around me and I am supposed to choose? That’s just cruel. Absolutely cruel.

My eyes are burning, but not with tears like they did yesterday. No, they’re burning with a fire. So much hatred, so much love, so much ink this body carries. They all have such great theories, they’re all right. What about me? Everything I say has been said, everything I think has been thought. Who am I? I’m just lost between all the words they’ve written and all the ones I haven’t. 

Did they have writer’s block too? Did they feel like hands were constantly holding them back, pulling at their hair and digging dents into their skins? Did their pens hover over the paper? Did they ever wish their mind wasn’t so full of noise?

I think they know me better than I do myself. When we look at it that way, we realize that we don’t know ourselves much. We know what makes us us. All the little pieces of the jigsaw and the mosaic we stole from those we love and those we love less. They all make us up. I’m not myself without that laugh I stole from my best friend. And I’m definitely not myself without the jokes I stole from my dad. If I grew up alone, I wouldn’t be half of the person I am now.