I wonder what an artist looks like.

If I had a quarter for every time someone said it-- "You're an artist! I can tell." I met a man on the street today who tried to guess my major. "I'm thinking Art," he said, and I said, "No, I-- I'm not-- I'm not, I-I just--"

How deep the desire must be that gives rise to these stuttering denials.

That's how it is with me. You know and I know. The more I want something, the more vehemently I deny its importance to me. I'm still not sure where I learned to do that.

He said, "Hey, it's okay," holding up his hands as if he thought he had scared me. He didn't. I do, though. It's difficult, trying to carve out some sense of identity when you're not sure you have the right to one or even the right to take up any space. I'm scared of how fiercely I can want.

It's true, though, what you said. I'm real at other times, but behind the lens, or with paint on my hands and scraps of paper littering the floor, I'm awake. I feel like myself. Nothing else feeds me like that. The closest I've ever come is being with you. If I try to subsist solely on love, though, I'll drain you dry and you're too good for me to begin with.

I know, I know.

Would it break your heart to know that a lot of the time I am as certain of my own worthlessness as I am of the fact that I'll never talk about loving you in the past tense? But I think you already know it.

I'm trying. I only want the best for you. If you want me to be happy, I want that, too-- for you, for you, for you. And for myself eventually, but writing has been so hard. Lately I've been trying to write without putting myself in it because there's something telling me that no one wants to read that. Even now it's telling me that doing this is selfish and self-indulgent. A waste of my time and, more to the point, yours and everyone else's. That I should stop. So I've been trying to keep myself out of the one way I've known how to speak because no one...wants me, right? That's what it's saying, even though the best things I write are, without fail, the things in which I was the most naked.

Lucy showed us a picture of herself she'd taken, posing in the forest without a scrap of clothing on her. "That's how you have to be if you want to be an artist," she said. "Completely naked." Instead I'm trying to take myself out of the picture.

I wonder what an artist looks like. I'm sorry for everything but I would like us both to learn how not to be.