To a Blank Page

Dear Blank Page,

I’m hear to tell you I’m not interested in your criticism anymore.

Who are you to judge me? You sit there, doing nothing but blankly staring at me from my computer screen, silently criticizing me, waiting for me to make a mistake so you can underline it with your smug red and green squiggles.

You are not the one sweating in front of her keyboard. You are not the one awake, driven out of bed at 12:51 am because goddammit she just couldn’t stand living in a skin too small for her anymore and finally had to do something brave. Something to let herself be seen. You are not the one utterly afraid, queasy with anxiety and fighting down her need to analyze every word as it comes out because she knows this is going to be posted tonight, because she made a promise to herself that this piece is not allowed to sit in the drafts folder waiting to be “perfected” like a hundred others. Not this time.

I don’t need your “should” and “shouldn’t”, your “not good enough”, your “who do you think you are”, “other people are better at this than you, leave it to them”, “that’s a comma splice there, you don’t even know how to write”, “you have nothing important to say”, “you have experienced nothing worth sharing”, and your accusations of “poser” and “pretentious”. I know they’re there, I know they always will be, but I don’t have to accept them as truth. So I’m not going to.

To which you reply: “Well you may have met my challenge this time. You may have filled my blank space with meaning-filled symbols of language this time, but you won’t do it again. You won’t keep it up, you never have. Your writing will be second-rate, seldom, sporadic, and shame-spurred as always. You will never be published. You will never produce anything of any value.”

To which I have but one thing to say.

I won’t, eh?

Bitch, watch me.