After spending three hours combing through the latest draft of my article, I was only half-way done editing. The article was long, my editors notes were chaotically scattered and multicolored, and it didn’t help that I had the story laid out on two different word processors. I was sprawled across the couch in my Mom’s art studio with indie-rock blaring over the clatter of pouring rain, a purple pen between my teeth despite the fact that none of the writing was on actual paper (I’m a child of the 21st century. Sue me). Tapping my feet against the other end of the couch, I came across a comment by the editor in chief marked in a cool blue- the kind of royal, snobbish blue void of emotion or empathy. “And here we are, 500 words in, and I still haven’t heard one original thought that discusses the topic with more than what everyone already knows.”

My nostrils flared. I closed the computer. And appropriately enough, I let my article about mental health at my high school kick me into the spiral of depression.

So a few minutes later, teary-eyed and covered with binge food, I decided I wasn’t original.

What did she want from me, more than what I had given- it wasn’t an opinions piece- I wasn’t the first person to cover it. It’s not like there was more to say about the issue. Maybe I didn’t share any “original thoughts” because I didn’t have any- I’m wasn’t trying to bore her.

I have nothing to contribute- what makes you expect me to have something new to add to the conversation when everyone at this school has been forced into the same brain?

Maybe I’m out of practice- maybe I did my nanowrimo and then I let my voice be swallowed by the monster- drowned out in essays and short responses and converted to newspaper articles. I wouldn’t say it’s my fault that I don’t have any original thoughts now that I’ve been turned into a droid.

Maybe 5 straight months of nothing but essay writing has made me forget how to speak my own language- the language of emotion and angst and original thought.

No wonder I’ve lost interest in my own novels and my own stories- they all say the same thing. Everyone says the same thing. Everything I’ve ever written was an attempt to “be original” and by “being original” I’ve been entirely conventional.

I’m prey to the same thing the hipsters I make fun of are: in a desperate race to deviate from the mainstream, I’ve just found myself in another current.

I’m not even alone. I’m not even the first person to be crippled by a lack of interest in my own thoughts. I’m not the first person to ask someone else how to be herself or to be so entangled in the meta-ness of it all that she begins to doubt the existence of “original thought” in the first place.

I’ll never write anything worth reading, I’ll never say anything worth listening to, and I’ll never invent something people would buy because everything I’ve ever done was parroting something else.

“Be original,” they tell me, but I am a girl made of mirrors- ten thousand shattered mirrors and I’m not even a person without people to reflect.

And here we are, 500 words in and you haven’t heard one word of original thought or anything you didn’t already know. Tell me who to be and I can be her- tell me what to write and I will write it- tell me what to do and I can do it, but I will never be original. Original is too mainstream.