THE GALLERY OF OUR INHIBITIONS
You don’t care what people think of you, you never have, not fully anyways… they can say what they like, they can judge all they want because you know deep down that they don’t truly know you. How could they?
Your loved ones can be misguided, your peers can be comparatively wrong, strangers simply don’t know you; you can be hard on yourself. The terminology changes but at the end of the day you can reassure yourself that they simply don’t know…
But when you are a writer, when you put pen to paper, key to blank document and create something that bleeds from your innerworkings to create something only you see. No matter the content, you are a part of every word… every description and waking thought you rushed to scribble down before it faded from your mind.
You dedicate your time and mind to these worlds, opinions, creative distinctions; and no matter how hard you are on yourself saying it’s no good, it is you. The words are you. You find your work, your ideas in the end beautiful if you’re lucky and through all the self-doubt you are proud of yourself for what you have created. It makes you whole, it gives you purpose. It gives you the voice you never felt you could express fully in your normal reality. This is who you are, and you have put it out there for everyone to see. There are no more excuses for their rejection, no more misguided reasons for them not enjoying it…That is the hardest part of writing because at the end of the day if they don’t accept your work… well.
Yet you continue to push forward and pull yourself up. You reread your work and continue to write because it is who you are, hoping that one day someone else out there, just one among the inevitable stream of consciousness, connects with you, sees your words and it makes sense. It finally makes sense with someone out there. A small spark coveted by the normality of their path now shines bright in your view.
They understand you… they finally truly see you.
But until that day you continue to try and be that light for yourself, you try to remember that you connect with your work, you understand it. Right? Doubt occurs often, uncertainty is a regular neighbor pestering you with muffins at the door hoping to be invited in. It tries every day to break you as you escape to your mind knowing the only relief is in there. In the worlds you work so tirelessly to show the collective, to invite them into the beauty you see every day when you stare off into the distance and people ask you ‘watcha’ thinking about? ‘. You smile in response and simply reply, ‘oh nothing much’ because there is no way to explain it through conversation. You’ve tried, but it never does it justice.
You write a synopsis, you write a query, doing your best to explain the vast contemplations of your creativity and it never feels enough but you do your best.
Your loved ones look in admiration when you try to explain your work as this beautiful painting of complexity, but it falls short through your parted lips. It always will in comparison to the written word you’ve found solace in… but you still try and their fixation on your explanation becomes a sign. A sign for the art gallery you are trying so hard to show them just a few feet further if they could just pry their eyes off of the ‘sign’ to see the masterpiece you have dedicated your life too. The painting with its swirls and missteps and splatters of individuality that your worried they might focus on.
Yet, no matter the mistakes and creases in your otherwise refined piece, you find yourself eager for others to finally see your work. To see what makes you who you are through your own voice…but you stand there alone. You stand there alone in your gallery of work, walking among the creations you beg to be seen. Beg to be given a chance for someone who will be brave enough, intrigued enough, to move past the crowd accumulating around the entrance. To walk past the red tape and see your potential.
For them to see that in your mind, that beautiful sign is actually sweet misguided blind encouragement and if they kept moving forward into your gallery, they’d find you standing there all by yourself. Waiting desperately for someone to take the risk and maybe out of the many, one would look at your splatter paint on canvas in the back of the gallery where you stand fixated completely on each insecurity and say under their breath... ‘wow this is beautiful’ .
