MY WRITER EPITAPH?

What does it mean for the rest of us when the lives of the greatest poets of our time can be summed up in one 8 ½ X 11 single-spaced page of prose? Their whole lives from birth through grade school to death are contained in just one short synopsis. What does it mean for the morning-toilers whose only motivation for dragging themselves from sleep hours before dawn to create strings of words is the coffee brewing, too expensive to waste? What will the epitaph be for the writer whose greatness is never disseminated beyond her own region, town, family or even her own mind? And where does that leave me? Though I keep plugging forward, writing these words, doing the job, and somehow convincing myself it means something, I wonder, does it mean SOMETHING? Of all the greatness I believe I stow somewhere deep within and which I have the potential to become, I can’t help but wonder if I am fooling myself into thinking these words on this paper matter to anyone in the world but me. And, really, does it even matter to ME? Day after day, I cajole myself into believing it all means something; that these words, this dream to share these words, and the courage to offer these words to share means I am a writer unlike those who have just as much talent but are not fearless or foolish enough to risk others’ eyes. I wonder if it is all a masquerade; a scene I play for myself to prevent myself from succumbing to the everyday drudgery pounding on my door seemingly more and more persistently. Some days I know believing this greatness is within is merely a trick. I play the trick loyally because I know the day I cease believing in the charade and succumb to what I fear is the truth is the day I slip into bottomless suffocating depression. Writing is a game of denial and I am a master. I trick the beast with the mantra, “It matters”. So if proven greatness can be reduced to one page, where DOES that leave me? Perhaps a brief synopsis of perseverance and courage that only mattered BECAUSE it mattered to me.