We Must Not Think of Ourselves

by Lauren Grodstein

“Is that you have no will. You just accept things as they are. You don’t stand up and fight. You don’t believe in the power to change. You’re a realist, which isn’t a bad thing, but if the world were only made of realists the world would never change.”

I was writing everything down, obviously—but it did strike me that perhaps writing it all down was not the most important thing we could do for ourselves. The most important thing we could do for ourselves was survive. Not just in words, but in actual bodies. And to that end, the archive was of no use at all. In fact, the archive suddenly seemed to me a sort of capitulation, an acceptance of the truth that we would not be here and so our written words would have to say what we ourselves could not. And I wasn’t interested in my writing, or anyone’s writing. I was interested in staying alive! I wanted to stay alive.