People write for different reasons. I feel that some, though, like Natsuko — and myself — write to belong. Somewhere, we feel like if only we do our craft well enough, we will feel less hurt. Less sad. Less lonely.

It’s a way to reach out to people without actually reaching out to people. Without getting too hurt, or too sad. Because we don’t really like people. We just like their stories.

Sometimes, we want those stories to be our own, too. Then we get close to them. We share our dreams with them. We share passion projects, startups. We share lives, plans, ambitions.

But sometimes things don’t work that way. Sometimes you want your stories to go one way. While those closest to you want them to go another way.

That’s when we realize that, sometimes, the more we write our lives and show them to people, the lonelier we become.

Until we become too afraid to write anything anymore.

“It feels like there is this thing, you know,” she gestured with her thin hands. “This heavy, formless thing that is dying to come out and become a story of its own.”

I nodded, watching those fingers.

“Sometimes I catch glimpses of it, a few words or phrases here and there. Like a very shy animal. Sometimes I sense its mood, its vibes. But whenever I try to get it down on paper — ”

“It’s gone?” I said.

“Yeah.”

Her eyes were full of fatigue. Of what exactly, I did not know. I kept wishing that I did. Instead, I spun the half-empty cup lightly in my hands and felt the ice rattling.

“They are like thoughts that are afraid of being formed. Feelings that are afraid of being made into words.”

Feelings that are afraid of being made into words. I thought about that for a moment. Maybe our feelings are just swimming there, each with their own desires, going their own separate directions. And we spend our entire lives trying to make sense of them.

Feelings. I didn’t even know what mine for her exactly was.

“It’s a strange thing, isn’t it?” she said. “Why would feelings be afraid of being made into words?”

“I don’t know.” I pondered this for a while. “Like how sometimes you don’t like to be photographed, I guess? The image that comes out might be very different from what you have idealized in your head.”

“You mean, if we actually wrote them down…?”

“We’ll feel like a different person. A worse person, perhaps. And we’ll have to confront that.”

She bit the flat straw in her coffee cup. “I guess you’re right. Whatever I did manage to write lately has always felt like a fake. And then I end up throwing them away, because what’s the point?”

“But then you feel like a failure because you haven’t been writing anything,” I said.

She nodded, and stared off. “How does that make sense?”

“It doesn’t,” I said.

She looked at me, then, expectantly.

“Our lives are large and contradictory, you know. We form identities, make goals, manage schedules. We convince ourselves we want this or that thing, because we ought to. But they don’t always agree with what our feelings truly desire.”

“Feelings,” she said. “It’s a complicated thing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. I watched her face, and I realized it truly was.