Writer's Block

It is a menace, really, an impalpable and mocking thing that seems to seep between the pages of my ordinary life and obscure whatever purpose there may have been in the first place. It kills everything in the air around it, smothering me with all the unused and magnificent ideas in the world until my skin begins to reek of old books and moldy misuse. But such is the life I suppose. One minute a genius and the other just a normal (such a disgusting word!) person, staring the at the screen, willing lifeless letters to spill from my fingers. Words that mean nothing, convey nothing, hold no beauty. Just words. Black, and simple, and nothing. Somewhere in the world, at this moment, there is someone around whom the light of creativity revolves like a halo; somewhere in this world there is someone whom, at this very moment, is creating the most beautiful prose ever bred by man. Whether or not it will ever be released to the masses, it is there. And not here. And such is the trouble. It has the power to break you down, if you let it. Your love for the craft will overwhelm you, block your creative mind from stretching itself to its full potential, and soon your unrequited love has made you ordinary. Plain. Not so much a writer as a struggling statistic. Mediocre, at best. In my head swirl thousands of words, passing through each other to create an idea that cannot be disregarded, but, in my ignorance, is. This faint glimmer, this overlooked promise, cares nothing for me; in some sadistic, heathen refusal to submit to my whims, brought on, no doubt, by my own torturous inability to recognize it, this fleeting idea has destroyed the possibility of beauty. And I suffer for it, unable to write down what I wish, instead ending with a pale copy, the pastel version of what could be undiluted color. I suffer for this art, if that is what it can be called at the hands of such an unaccomplished mind as mine, and it spits back in my face the dribble I dare to call my pride. It threatens to take hold of me permanently, this sickness, forever ripping the beauty from my lines, damning me to a lifetime of mediocrity. Imagine: a world that is extraordinary only in its intense nothingness. It spreads through my mind like a cancer, handling and ultimately consuming each cell, until it reaches that nothingness. That complete absence. That cataclysmic, unearthly silence of mind and page. A self-fulfilling prophesy, perhaps, this faint fear of ambiguity that soon wraps around me like a strangle knot and splits the very atoms that seem to provide me with inspiration. The more I fear, the less I believe in the workings of my own mind, and the more rage and hatred my ideas have for my inexperienced fumbling toward something immaculate. I am trapped by my own inability, it seems, and have no one to blame but myself and my own rebellious mind. A vicious cycle, or perhaps a malady that I could feasibly defeat but choose not to under the guise of my fear? If only I wasn’t a shaking and disillusioned addict, shooting my pretended genius into my veins and awaiting the high. I fear for the rest of my artistic life.