okay, so maybe I'm a terrible writer

Maybe my words are disgusting—bloated, self-indulgent, full of shit. Maybe I should just pack it all up and disappear. Fold into the background, close the laptop, let the silence win. Maybe the things I write are repelling people. Maybe I’m not trendy enough. Maybe that’s what it is. I don’t write like the curated captions. I don’t slap aesthetics over rot. Should I write with more angst? More clever pain? Is that what people want?

Do I need to dramatize my suffering just enough to make it consumable?

Should I push myself into unbearable circumstances just so I can keep bleeding for applause? Should I finally admit I want to die? That I want to burn it all down—even in the afterlife, let this life fucking collapse into ash? Let everything I thought I knew about myself die and shrivel into nothing?

Should I stop writing for myself?

Because when I think of the past versions of me—when I think about how I write for her, for them, to hold their hand and guide them through the fire—I wonder if that’s enough. Is that enough?

Is that fucking enough?

Answer me.

I don’t know. I truly don’t fucking know.

I study others. I watch them closely. Their cadence, their titles, the way they catch attention with so little soul. Should I mimic that? Should I do what they do? Oh wait, then I’m not being authentic, right? Then I’m a fraud.

But when I am authentic, it’s quiet. Too quiet.

Is it my tone? My words? Am I talking into the void too much, too loud, too unfiltered? Did I get comfortable in the silence? Does the silence mean rejection? Does it mean they hate me?

Do you hate something different?

Am I even different? Or am I just spiraling down this rabbit hole, convincing myself I’m unique while everyone else sees right through it—sees the poser in the room? A poser with her desperate little fingers clutching the air, hoping someone might say, “I felt that.”

But then again, didn’t many of the greats wait until after they died? Until their bodies decomposed and their bones turned to dust before anyone saw them for what they really were? Should I go six feet deep now? Would you read me then? Would you finally eat my words off my decaying flesh and praise God for sending such a “visionary” into your feeds?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Am I posting too much? Am I oversharing? Are my thoughts too raw, too jagged, too unpolished for your liking?

HOW DARE SHE BRING LIGHT TO THIS. BANISH HER.

That’s what I hear. That’s what I feel coming. Like a storm whispering just beyond the edge.

Am I doing something wrong?

Tell me. Please. Am I a bad writer?

Because I tried to believe I wasn’t. I tried to believe I was doing something worthy. But now I don’t know.

I will never know. Not when I’m pushing my way to the front in a crowd that keeps dragging me back by the shoulders, no matter how hard I scream or bleed or hope.

So I ask again, as softly as I can:

Am I a good writer?