i have nothing to say

here it is!

My therapist, Nicole, a beautiful late-twenties Staten Island resident at whom I have been yammering for two and a half years, often points out to me that I suffer from what she calls “all-or-nothing thinking.” This means I tend to live my life ping-ponging back and forth between two extremes, neglecting the area in between them. I think in terms of “always”/“never,” “every”/“none,” “right”/“wrong,” and, most especially, “good”/“bad.” I struggle greatly with making mistakes, because I’ve pigeonholed myself into someone that can either be exactly good and right all the time, or irredeemably bad and wrong all the time. You can probably imagine how well that works out for me, and if you can’t, just ask Nicole.

Living within the bounds of perpetual dichotomy is obviously unhelpful (see, here I’ve just caught myself in another one: “helpful”/“unhelpful”!) when looked at from an objective standpoint, but, in a lot of ways, it feels like it makes my life easier. Judgment calls, evaluations, and decisions are much simpler when there are only two choices. Life, in all its inconclusiveness and muddle, is so overwhelming for me when I think about it in its totality that I seem to prefer trying to erase all its nuance and put its constituents into rigid little boxes. I’ve always loved sorting and categorizing things. It makes me feel like I have control, which is something I desperately crave. This goes here, that goes there. It’s the same reason that I prefer decluttering my desk drawers or folding and putting away laundry than getting on my hands and knees and scrubbing the floor: the former tasks allow you to feel like you’re cleaning, but don’t require you to confront the real MESS. In other words: it’s the easy way out.

This method of thinking sort of makes me look at the world like a child, where every question is a yes/no or a true/false. Do I want to go to class today? NO. Am I going to anyway, because that’s the right thing to do? YES. Okay. And wasn’t being a child so great? Wasn’t it fun, and effortless, and easy? Yes, to some degree. But it was also very limiting and came with a lack of agency. So, too, does my worldview.

I have wanted to write something on this website for upwards of six months. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, a number of people whose writing and thoughts and overall characters I truly admire are on here (Wickham and Bahar, if you’re reading this, shout out to you both). Secondly, my father has been telling me to start a blog since I was about six years old, but only recently did this amorphous blog idea begin to take shape in my consciousness in the form of Substack. Thirdly, all I’ve ever wanted to be is a writer, and, based on what I know about writers, they tend to write things, so I figured I should probably be doing that too. (Note: “should”/“shouldn’t”!)

What has been stopping me? Simple: I have nothing to say. At least, that’s what I’ve led myself to believe. This is where Nicole, God bless her, becomes relevant to the story again. I’ve realized that my “all-or-nothing thinking” has become quite literal in this area of my life, because I’ve tricked myself into believing that whatever piece of writing I produce has to say everything and resonate with everyone, or else it says nothing at all and is completely worthless. Thus, I have been waiting patiently for this miraculous idea to come along: The Ultimate Thing to Say that will resound within every person’s heart, will be relevant to every aspect of human existence, and will make the masses wildly impressed with me. I’ve gotten it into my head that if that idea never materializes, then I will write nothing at all, because when you see the world in black-and-white like I am wont to do, the only appropriate alternative to everything is nothing.

There is a quote from my favorite book, The Idiot by Elif Batuman (who also writes on here, so if by some miracle you’re reading this, Elif, just know that you’re my hero), that I have posted and parroted a number of times. It is as follows:
“Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a writer, this conviction was completely independent of my having ever written anything, or being able to imagine ever writing anything, that I thought anyone would like to read.”
This line strikes a chord deep within me every single time I reread it, because it perfectly describes my exact mindset. However, I’ve always believed that the aforementioned Big Idea would come along and alter this mindset and suddenly make me capable of sharing my writing with the big wide world.

Unsurprisingly, the idea has not arrived, and it’s beginning to dawn on me that it (probably) never will. Such an idea does not exist. So now I’m at the point where I’m trying to convince myself that just because a piece of writing doesn’t do everything, that doesn’t mean it does nothing. I’m a little late to the party on this one, it seems, but I’ve recently figured out that there are more options besides “everything” and “nothing.” So, yeah, I guess you could say there are some pretty major epiphanies going on in this noggin of mine.

There are some questions I’m still grappling with. What do I want to say? To whom is it going to have any value? What could possibly be the benefit of my writing anything when there is war, famine, disease, death, THE ECONOMY…! and my words aren’t being used to help stop those things? And what on earth will I do in the inevitable circumstance that somebody does find what I have to say useless, or vapid, or even just not entirely great?

Well, I don’t know. And that’s the point: I have to learn to be comfortable not knowing. Not knowing what I want, or what I feel, or what to do. I have to learn to live in the gray area. I have to learn to be okay with the prospect of writing something that will not resonate with everyone, that not everyone will agree with, that will not address every world issue, that will not make every profound point that exists, and — the most horrifying of all — that not everyone will think is good. In short, I have to grow up a little bit, and act like the adult I am, and face the possibility of mess.

So today, I am starting. Today I present you not with everything, not with nothing, but with something. I don’t know when or even if I will do this again. I don’t know who will read this or who will enjoy it. There are a lot of things I don’t know. But there are some things I do know: for instance, I have thoughts! and dreams! and ambitions! and they feel intangible and out of reach for me right now, and the only way to try and make something out of them is to take an actionable step in the right direction. Or, really, in any direction at all. Even the wrong one! Anything other than standing still, letting life wash over me, waiting passively for The Big Idea that doesn’t exist, fearing being “bad” and therefore not even daring to try to do something “good.”

Today in Ithaca it is snowing, and the sky is gray.