“I wish I could get back to all of those things I used to love. Reading books by the dozen, tearing though page after page, chasing desperately after the characters inside. Writing endless excerpts from books I’ll never right. Drawing sketch after sketch, perfecting a skill that only serves purpose in my dreams. I long to rediscover elegant sentence structures, and the smooth glide of paint across canvas. In this beauty lies my heart and soul. My entire body was intertwined with these arts, molding my bones as if they were sculpture. Yet time after time I was barred off from chasing after artistic expression. Society built a fence around these words, these canvases, only to be looked at from the outside but never from within. Instead I was forced to paint not with my soul but with the tools society gave me. It chased me away from all the things I once loved, for it does not appreciate any colors that cannot be mixed in to green. I was forced to slash away at my words - there is no room for flowery language in the real word. I was forced to leave my treasured creations in a pile of drawings underneath my bed that would never be touched again- without abandoning these things I was told I would never be able to move forward. I now exist as a half person, being pushed towards utilizing my “strongest skills”, the very ones which have been torn from me, leaving a gaping hole in my heart and in my consciousness. Now I don’t know how to write ornate sentences or sketch detailed images. There are no more comforting heroes to lull me to sleep at night or mindless scribbles to ease my stress. Instead, I sit at my desk, dreading the phone calls that I will have to make. I am left crippled with anxiety, heading towards a future in which I cannot see any love that parallels that which I felt for these things that I once held so closely, but now seem like forgotten dreams and neglected wishes. I am left with an absence, one which I no longer know how to fill. Oh, how I long for the past.”
- March 22, 2018
