i am not a monster...

i have been wanting to go to the rosenberg library since we moved to galveston...and finally had the chance to go!  i was just wandering the memoir section (my mind and reading habits are all in one place these days!)...and stumbled on My Invented Country by Isabel Allende. i was having a really rough day and decided i needed a glass of wine and a seat overlooking the crashing waves with my lovely new book. i could not have prepared myself for what she said to me in those few moments of peace...

from My Invented Country:

Once I heard a famous Afro-American writer say that from the time she was a little girl she felt like a stranger in her family and her hometown. She added that nearly all writers have experienced that feeling, even if they have never left their native city. It's a condition inherent in the profession, she suggested; without the anxiety of feeling different, she wouldn't have been driven to write. Writing, when all is said and done, is an attempt to understand one's own circumstance and to clarify the confusion of existence, including insecurities that do not torment normal people, only chronic non-conformists, many of whom end up as writers after having failed in other undertakings. This theory lifted a burden from my shoulders. I am not a monster; there are others like me.