"Of course it's all trash..."

Sometimes my friends have more faith in me than I have in myself. Several times since he moved to Chicago, R has introduced me to friends of his as a writer. As "one hell of a writer." As "an amazing playwright." Just as frequently, K has reminded me of stories I wrote in creative writing in high school, quoting them word for word. (I had to dredge up the document to fact-check her and, sure enough, she was right.)

This morning, I was reading Christopher and His Kind by Christopher Isherwood (I finished it this afternoon, under a flowering tree), and came across the following excerpt of a letter from his friend Edward Upward:

Olive showed me your letter in which you said something about being silently judged. Of course it's all trash, because--though Marx may not have said it--each of us helps the revolution best by using his own weapons. And your best weapon is obviously writing. It's my misfortune that I have to fight as a fifth-rate teacher.

Those of us who have friends like R and K, and Edward Upward, are the lucky ones. These are the friends who don't believe our nonsense when we say we're headed in a different direction. They insist on continuing to see us as our best selves. It's not that they're inflexible in their conception of our identity, rather they see through all our bluster to the core of what makes us us.

During the Summer of Angst and the following years, I asked myself, "If I'm not a writer, and I've spent my entire life since fifth grade thinking of myself as a writer, then who am I?" I never did come up with a satisfactory answer. Thank goodness. And thank goodness I'm surrounded by people who love me and know better.