Nura asks me if I’m going to be one of those writes who kill themselves after they write best-sellers, like Earnest Hemingway. I laugh and say I would never have enough courage, nor would I be able to let go of life. I tell her I’d be too preoccupied thinking of what I’d miss if I did commit suicide.
When I was a freshman, my English teacher said I write like Hemingway. Now my friend wonders if I’ll live like him. I reassure her that I’d never kill myself.
I’m wondering why writers go crazy or put a bullet in their heads. Is it the enormous amount of thinking that becomes too exhausting? Is it the loneliness that drives them to the edge? Or is it simply because they reach a point where they think what they write is pointless?
Maybe it is pointless, but so is life. If there was ever a point in life, it’d be happiness. Live to be happy. That’s my point: I write to be happy. It’s like a formula, a formula that doesn’t require much thought.
So I guess my answer to her is, if writing doesn’t make me happy and I find no substitute, then maybe a bullet will become an option. But for now, writing is my only option.