Intent

I feel sadness.

It’s a rare day when I can say that. I can be annoyed quite a bit, I’ve been increasingly angry. But sadness is the most uncommon thing, and it’s been very much present the past few days.

I’ve been mentally pointing accusing fingers at caffeine, hormones, the weather…I’ve no idea where to place any blame. I settled on the idea that it must be all that has happened suddenly suffocating me at once. And looking back now I remember feeling that it would come to this.

I started posting private vlogs on a new e-mail, thinking it might help. But my need to hide them from nearly everyone has made them useless to me. So I suppose I need to start posting them publicly.

A few days ago I felt a sudden steel certainty that I had to change things. I am 20 now. I need to start actively creating and working towards a life where I can make money doing things I enjoy. That day was the beginning of this sadness.

Maybe there’s a part of my subconscious that feels like a failure? A failure as an artist, and as all else? Maybe that’s why I had an extreme emotional reaction to someone’s casual joke about my drawing of a large eye. I felt that it confirmed something. I ran off and took a shower of all things, and I had my different feelings battle themselves out in my head. What it meant, what my reaction meant, what it all means.

I collapse on the inside when I imagine the possibility of going to school, graduating, and then filling a slot that someone wrote out for me to do. You know, an office job or something. Some set of daily tasks that someone else created. A position that makes me replaceable. Even jobs that I used to dream about. WitSec agent, criminal profiler, psychologist. They’re names for sets of tasks.

I want to feel free.

More and more I don’t feel free, I don’t feel that I’m throwing wide the door. And I think it creates a deep panic, like the walls are closing in on me to crush me. It’s going so far against what my nature has been clawing for ever since I was 11. But what else is there to do? I’m not going anywhere, and I need stability. I need to recover and clear my mental fog.

It’s almost a scary thing sometimes. More and more it’s a scarier thing. Like there’s something really wild in the marrow of my bones and all it wants is free reign and adventure. It wants an enormous canvas and whatever stupid colors I feel like using, and it wants to paint whatever the heck it wants without feeling anxious about whether or not it’ll sell, about whether or not there’s a market for someone like me and my work. There’s a market for everyone! I say to myself. Yes, yes there is. But the issue is whether or not it’s a big enough market to let me be free. To supply things adult humans need to go on and do what we’d like.

I haven’t been truly inspired for over a month now, I paint and draw eyes when I can’t think of anything else. Because you can do so much with eyes.

I used to draw beautiful dresses. I can’t draw them anymore. I’ve lost that completely. Ever since I had a short spat with bulimia and made a new promise to myself to stay strong against it (which resulted in my drawing here, Effects of Thinspo) I can’t view female figures the same way.

I’ll begin to sketch an ideal hips-to-waist ratio and then my hands go against the desire to make something perfect.

NO! They shout, what is perfection?

Perhaps I want to paint something everyone will view as lovely?

Anything can be viewed as lovely. An ugly face with the right personality is lovely.

Ideal figures will sell more.

Why do you want to make crap that’ll sell?

Because I freaking need to. 

Why?

So I won’t be trapped working as a secretary or a waitress at a normal freaking job and die a nobody. That’s why.

Sincerity sells. Just be sincere in your art.

That didn’t sell very well before.

Do you want to become someone by making things everyone approves of? Is creativity your cash ticket now? Is that what art is to you now? Is it your tool?

I need to begin somewhere.

And so the battle will rage on for a while until I stare at the boxy or disproportionate figure on my little canvas in front of me and I want to scream and throw something. Time, time, time. So quickly there is no time. My hands won’t obey me. At least, they try, but can’t get far anymore.

Trapped, incapable.

I feel so…agitated. I feel that I’m capable of so much. Why can’t I make the things I know I can? Why does it have to turn into an internal war?

There’s a documentary I’ve been planning for years now, but I’m always so torn about starting it because I can feel my intent surrounding its creation quickly morphing from sincere to…other things. Imagining the attention, the process, the possible cash flow. How cold and sick and odd of me. And I always decide against starting it because I want to make something that large only if I’m determined in the beauty of it.

I know myself. I know that I’ll keep pressing on, keep trying and eventually I’ll reach a brainplace that lets me create, once I stop demanding inspiration.

As for all else happening, it seems that it’s just a tsunami of feels about everything that has happened since I moved to WV, and it’s simply something to ride out.

I’ll be fine.

I’m just a very frustrated, very sad, quite scared human at the moment. I’ve not changed to this darkness for good. I can feel that.

<^_^>