On the last day of class my creative writing professor quoted Rilke, “If one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn’t write at all.” “It’s not worth the agonizing,” he explained. After ten weeks of laboring over our creative pieces all nine of us students knew exactly the agony he was referring to: the grief of establishing your voice, the constant self-doubt, all to create something that in six months you will read back and cringe at.

My professor continued, hands clasped and tone serious, “But for me, I couldn’t live without that agony, because without writing, my life would have no real meaning.”

I have thought about his words for a long time and where I found myself within them, if at all. Did writing give meaning to living or living give meaning to writing?

I have been writing creatively since I was eleven years old, scribbling short stories in a Lisa Frank notebook, promising myself I would be published by seventeen, and after school would move to New York, where the writers lived. I was voted “most likely to be an author” by my seventh grade class, which at the time felt like an earnest promise of success. But the older I got, the longer I wrote, and the more I read from others, the more I started to doubt myself. By the time I got to college I had a complicated relationship with writing. When it was good I would think I was one of the greatest minds of our generation, and when it was bad I would spiral into an existential crisis wondering what on earth I was even trying for. My time at Smith has exposed me to fantastic writers that have changed my life for the better, and I’m not just talking about Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath and George Eliot, I’m talking about Greta M. and Emily H. and Sofia C. who I have had the privilege of reading from in my creative writing workshops. I feel so lucky and inspired encountering these writers, but in the past four years, I have also wondered about the impact of my own words and if it was worth saying anything at all, when greater writers could have said it better.

I’m twenty-one and a senior and as graduation approaches, I am squinting my eyes looking out towards what will be the rest of my life and it’s somehow hazier than when I was thirteen, receiving that superlative. Echoing in my head, I hear the voice of my wise and acclaimed professor tell me on the last day of the last creative writing class I will ever take in undergrad that he could not live without writing, and I no longer know if I could say the same.

***

I’ve been going monthly to New York to visit my partner, a recent Mount Holyoke grad who now lives in the city. Most days we spend together, holed up in their apartment ordering Thai food and watching shows we’ve seen so many times we’ve memorized the lines. Those days are only sweet and only wonderful. But some of the days we have to spend apart because they have a job to go to, and on those days, I am left alone to find ways to occupy my time.

One day, they were working till late. It was a particularly warm August and I had spent the entire day inside reading and checking my email because I did not know where else to go and because something about the idea of going outside by myself in the city that I had always hoped to live in had made me nervous and tired. But by dinnertime, my hunger outweighed my anxiety and I walked out the door.

Outside the apartment it was dark and humid. Some men were playing acoustic guitar in front of their repair shop and women and children danced to their music. I wandered around, trying not to look lost until I found a pizzeria around the corner. I bought a slice of pepperoni and a can of beer with the crumpled five dollar bill in my pocket. I was told to wait for my order, but it was a crowded place and I didn't know where to stand. I took a spot by the corner and turned on my phone frantically trying to make it look like I was doing something as if it was some sort of crime to be idle. After getting my food I walked back outside. It started to rain while I was waiting. I sat on a planter and took shelter under a tree. I ate my pizza in silence, the rain still managing to find my face, drops dodging the leaves. I imagined myself in the city, living there and loving there and writing there for real. The image was foggy like a dream. I watched a fat rat run in front of the couple taking a night stroll. They both screamed and clutched each other as they crossed to the other side. I laughed at them and quickly turned around to make sure there weren’t any next to me. I stand up panicked, unaware of what to do with my body.

At the time, in my creative writing class, we had been reading Joan Didion’s essay, “Goodbye to All That”. She says, “It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also . . . a city for only the very young.”

***

When we are alone my partner admits to me that they sometimes regret choosing to live in New York.

“But you love it though,” I remind them, “right?”

“Yeah. . . yeah I do.”

They say it like they are trying it convince themselves of it, and yet I still believe them because I understand that feeling of loving something that doesn’t always love you back. Why do we keep doing it? The more appropriate question is how can we not?

“Goodbye to All That” begins with the line ,“It is easy to see the beginning of things and harder to see the end.” Maybe one day I will tire of writing and tire of the city. I don’t know when that day is but it is not here now.

Standing in the rain, pizza cold and socks soggy, I thought about Joan Didion and how stupid and young and terribly out of place I felt, and yet I didn’t feel like I wanted to leave. Didion said she thought the city smelled like “lilacs and garbage.” I could smell the garbage

sweating from the bags tossed haphazardly on the sidewalks the moment I stepped outside the door. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply trying to also smell the lilacs. I swore I could smell them then. I swear it now.

I walked back to the apartment.

I pulled out my notebook.

I wrote about the rain.