DEAD END

“Write? I can only dump out my soul like a pile of smelly laundry. Write? Feeling subhuman, what do I have of humanity to communicate? I can’t see anything clearly, least of all myself, except in odd dreams, when I’m caught in the sweep of a searchlight. In the day I’m blind, and, like some wretched rat, I scuttle for my hole when I can. This house, this life, is a burrow to the bottom of hope. The only safety I know—the safety of the dead end.

“Anger. I feel fury at my dogged inadequacy to the task of believing, of tooth and nail tearing myself out of this lethargy. During the day, my brain toils through the savage overgrowth of self-recrimination, and by night, I only want to sleep—to be obliterated in nature’s merciful way.”