“My therapist says I’m driven to marginalize myself wherever I go,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if it is Hollywood or Judaism or journalism. I either have to be the leader or in my grasping for leadership, I marginalize myself. I don’t relate to people in a normal way.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I could give you lots of good stories, lots of good reasons,” I said. “I’ve built them up over the years. I’ve accumulated them as self-defense. I could tell you it is because of my devotion to my craft, to writing and to art and to the transcendent. I could tell you it’s because I’m a heroic truth-seeker. And I’ve believed these things. I still do.
“I’ve thrown away my life. I’ve exchanged what was valuable for grandiose delusions.”
“Why do you marginalize yourself?”
“It’s because I’m afraid that if I were to relate to people with an open heart, if I did it without throwing up barriers between us, then people might reject me for who I am. I’ve thrown up so many obstacles to people getting to know the real me because I’m scared to death that I could not handle it if I was rejected for who I really am. So I write a blog and I do outrageous things and when people reject me for these externals, it is not nearly so painful if they chose to reject me after getting to know me.”
