Soul Searching pt 4

After everything that I have thought about and realized, I now know that I have to take the next step, or risk becoming as hollow as I saw my art to be. You see, when a person denies themselves for too long, they shut down. They lose the light, they close their eyes, and they become a shadow. I think that I've seen it happen...

I know someone who was once bright, brilliant even, bubbly and happy, kind and compassionate. They had suffered through a childhood filled with discouragement but seemed to have put that aside, for a while. Despite their own self doubt, this person tried. They had something to work for, something they wanted to achieve, a purpose. And then, they hit a brick wall. Challenges came their way, and darkness, and it produced fear and uncertainty. The moment came where they could choose to flower or choose to stay closed, to face the challenges head on no matter what they might bring, or to reduce themselves to clinging to anything solid they could grab a hold of. They chose to cling, to hide from the fear and the change, to button themselves up and shut themselves off from reality, society, ... me. It was a slow change, this doesn't happen overnight. But in time, they were nothing like they had been. Just a shadow, a desperate shadow defined by the fear that had changed them, clinging to any kind of security they could find and ultimately drowning themselves in it.

When all of this started for me, I didn't know what was going on. In time I realized that this is a test... a challenge... it's like putting on pressure and heat to harden steel. You can either run from the furnace, or you can choose to pass through it. I became determined that no matter what came my way I was going to pass through. I would let go of EVERYTHING I had ever clung to, give it up and let it go. I will eradicate my possessions, my job, my home, my money, my security, my identity, I'll get rid of everything I thought defined me in order to actually find me. In this process, I've moved along until I hit upon the biggest and hardest thing there is...

Letting go and opening up the curtain. Letting the light in, letting people see me for who I really am, who I've always been, who I long to be. The biggest part of doing this is to remove the divide between my "personalities". The art becomes one with the words, the face becomes one with the name, it's no longer pieces of me strewn about, it is all of me and it is only me. That is how it has to be, not listening to worries or fears about what people will think, if they'll reject me or my art because of why I created it or what I believe, if they'll be angry or hurt, fearful or dissonant.

I'm going to re-do everything. I'm going to pull it all together...

I'm just going to be myself.





Next: the original post that became this multi-day tirade :)