I found three e-mails from DonnaIsBlue. Needless to say, I've been afraid to open them.

I welcome e-mails; I welcome any human contact. Especially from a girl who finds "Girl on the Bridge" to be a favorite film. But I'm nonetheless afraid to open her e-mails.

I don't open bank statements, student loan bills, or creditors' threats, either. For three years in law school, I never opened my grades.

I don't ever read anything that's likely to be Bad News.

If ever I've disagreed with someone, argued with someone, I become afraid to read their letters or e-mails, afraid to take their calls. My immediate, instant, instinctive assumption is that whatever the issue is or was-- I must be wrong. I can't imagine being in the right or having points to make.

I *must* be wrong. After all, I've never won an argument (especially with a girl) in my life.

I *must* be wrong. If I were ever right, if ever I *could* be right...well, I'd have a girlfriend, a life, a career. No one like me can possibly *ever* be right.

When I finished grad school I had topics I wanted to research and write on. I had articles and books I wanted to write. I had chapter outlines, working bibliographies, notes. But there was no way I could do anything with them. They're all on yellow legal pads, boxed away in my closets. I have no idea how to approach a publisher, and I can't think that any of my projects matter at all.

My advisor and my committee members urged me to publish my doctoral thesis. I just couldn't. I knew that in the Real World, the world of Grown-Ups, nothing I could say would be of any value or deserving of anything other than contempt and derision. I knew that the Grown-Ups would tell me how inept I was, that they'd ask my old advisor and colleagues and committee how they ever tolerated someone so *obviously* dense and incompetent, someone whose German was so awful, someone who just *didn't get it*, someone who'd never ever ever be a Real Person...

I couldn't go to conferences and give papers.

I'm so utterly terrified of being shown to be pathetically wrong, of being mocked and discredited. A book rejected, a paper cut apart by an audience-- after that, who would ever believe you, trust you, take you seriously ever again? There were people once long ago who believed that I had "potential". Disappointing them isn't something I want to do.

Nor do I want to find out that they were wrong about me, nd that I was a fool for believing them. I don't want to think that my whole life-- whenever people told me I was talented, whenever I was treated as talented --was just a bad joke.

Last summer a book appeared, a short story collection edited by Katherine Kurtz. I have a longish story in it. Katherine has urged me to write more, to do a story for her next anthology-- stories about the Knights Templar. I can't bring myself to write again. What could someone like me ever have to say?

I can never be a real attorney-- how can I be an advocate when I can't ever believe that my position might be right? When I assume that anyone arguing against me is always right?

I'll never be able to write the histories I'd planned and outlined. I'll never have the money (or the ability to board an aircraft) that would get me back to Vienna, Budapest, Zagreb. And I'll never be able to believe that I'd have anything worthwhile to say.

I'd never had the least problem standing up in front of a class lecturing. That's never bothered me. But I can't envision speaking to a conference. They'd always prove me wrong, always be able to show that no one like me has any right to be there.

What could I *possibly* have to say that a publisher, a conference committee, an appeals court would find valuable? They can see-- I have no life, no lover, no career. How could anyone like *that* be taken seriously?

So...as much as I find DonnaIsBlue's writings to be well-done, as bright and articulate as she is, I cannot open her e-mails. I know that she finds me contemptible. I can't argue with anyone. I've never, ever won an argument. How can I ever *possibly* be in the right or have anything weighty to say?

I used to believe that I could be an historian, that I could actually write. Here at the end of 2002 I can't even argue with someone from DiaryLand... I can't open e-mails. I know that whatever I think or believe or propose or argue will always and ever be wrong-- more, that it'll be contemptible and stupid.