2019/11/8 (Fri) 09:40

I feel like there haven’t been actual people that insulted my art, it was more of an overall sense of rejection.

I compared myself to my sister for as long as I can remember, her art always better and receiving more praise.

Her grades were better, her relationships with our extended family members were better, I always felt overshadowed and less than her.

In school I somewhat remember the art teacher expecting great things from me because I was the little sister, so did absolutely every other teacher that had taught her as well.

So from a young age I was to be as good as someone else, not my own person.

Not good enough just being me as I was.

I learned to compare myself to others (by seeing them compare me to my sis), from my sister to my peers, onto absolutely everyone else.

Always harboring this sense of fear of being discovered, just how bad at everything I actually was.

I never received praise, or if I did get praised, it wasn’t as much as her or someone else.

I felt unwanted, never as good as someone else, not getting picked for sports teams, roles at drama club, struggling to create and maintain friendships, always overshadowed by others.

I used to draw so much, creating my own characters, writing stories and drawing it out.

I even used to drink coffee at night so that I would stay awake for as long as possible to draw and think of my fiction.

I used to create graphics just for the kick of it, I enjoyed it.

I used to love to act, drama club was a lot of fun even if I didn’t get picked for some of the roles.

The few “plays” we put up in the last years of high school for literature classes were the best thing ever.

I used to love to dance, I looked forward to wiggling my white ass to the rhythms of salsa during the classes.

I used to do cross-stitching and enjoyed it so much.

And now…

Just the word “drawing” is enough to give me an anxiety attack, I don’t remember when was the last time I wrote something.

Anything to do with design makes me cringe because I hate everything I make so much.

Acting, dancing and all other possible forms of art, long forgotten.

I wanted to go to music school but nobody would pay for it. By the time I managed to buy a guitar I was already consumed by perfectionism, not able to handle sucking compared to other students, not even to hear myself practice at home.

So I quit. Just like I quit everything.

I don’t remember any concrete phrases or words that somebody could have told me to influence how I felt towards art and my relationship with it.
It has always been inside of me, this sense that I shouldn’t because I’m not good at it.

I physically cringe and it pains me so bad when I make something and it sucks real bad.

I do not allow myself failure due to the conditioning I’ve been through for as long as I can remember.

Never good enough, never receiving praise for anything I did.

By the time I met people who would praise my work, I had stopped believing them.

Unwanted, unneeded, never good enough, amateur, poser, imposter, failure.

I failed my design school entrance exams, never won a Japanese speech contest.

The failure of those exams confirmed to me that I do indeed suck at everything, especially coming after I had just suffered the blow of absolutely fucking up my regular examination.

I just felt like I had finally been discovered as the failure that I am. Somehow having been hiding away for 12 years in school with good enough grades, the exams put an end to my facade.

It’s all so intertwined, why must it be so difficult, why couldn’t all of my issues be separate?

Self-hatred, feeling inferior, absolute emotional deprivation, substance-abuse problems, creative block, self-sabotage, perfectionism, imposter syndrome.

All of these are just a fucking circle, I can’t address just one thing without uncovering a fucking mountain of issues.

Why can’t it be that the only reason I have a creator’s block is because some teacher said one mean thing when I was 5 and that be the end of it.

I have been digging inside with meditation and other books, leaving this huge creativity issue partially uncovered leaving me feeling absolutely blocked for the past few weeks. It’s like I try to fix one problem, a dozen more popup.

I don’t even know whether anything that I’m doing is going to be of any use, but I’m too afraid to stay where I am at the moment.

That poor artist child inside of me is fucking weeping due to the abuse I myself have been putting it through.

How mean of me…