Thought I Was Free

Haven't used this thing in awhile, per my norm...I hate to bring it back with something like this, but it has to go somewhere.




The ex has a new boyfriend.
It's been over a year. This shouldn't bring up the kind of unrelenting heartache that it does. I don't even know what possessed me to check.
Now I'm stuck without the ability to go back to sleep, quietly shivering in fear of the dreams.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, and in some ways it's almost refreshing to know that I can still feel at all.

Why shouldn't I be surprised? Am I that obsessive of a person that I'll hold on to these feelings for that amount of time?

In a word, yes.

It has to do with creation, you see. In my case with music, with writing, with my mind.

There is this scarcely-mentioned similarity between artists and drug addicts. I'll do what I can to elaborate on it, but know that I am doomed to fail. You won't understand.

Initially, you have the choice to create things. You work, you practice, you study, you become fixated on developing your skills. If you're lucky, people belittle the amount of blood and tears poured into your ability by complimenting your 'talent.' As if you just woke up at the level you are today.

Then something else happens. The choice, it goes away.

Why? Creation is more akin to fire than any other element. Like fire, it requires fuel - emotion, at a level the average person rarely pauses to consider. Art lives there, breathes there. It's like a banquet to the muse.

The delusion that non-artists and non-addicts suffer from is that maintaining that fire remains a choice. There is a point where you are bound to your ability, when the talent is no longer yours - in fact, it would be more accurate to say you belong to it.
At that point, you have a few options available. Most tone down their fire, placate it with other elements; you know, life and family and friends and careers. Some fires are more difficult than others.

If you're thinking, "Why not just stop completely?" than you've missed the point. It is no longer a choice, whatever it may appear from the outside. Beethoven captured it to some degree, when asked why he composed music...the answer was along the lines of "What is in my soul must come -out.-"

The tragedy is that extra sensitivity to emotion, when coupled with the obsessive nature of developing artistic ability, gains the potential to wreak havoc on your spirit. If you aren't careful, it will use you up, burn you out like a flickering candle, and leave you with nothing.
I do mean nothing. There's precious little comfort to be had in your own creations, after all.

But where's the addiction? That's the high you get, while you're writing or drawing or playing. It's the expression of these truths and feelings that you can't get out any other way. It's both the greatest high and the darkest low available to a human being.

Why does that make me more likely to hold on to my emotions?
You tell me; would it be easy for such a person to become consumed by some other addiction, to substitute their cravings with a person - maybe expecting that person to save them from themselves? Could that unreasonable expectation, if fulfilled even a little, utterly destroy someone when it is taken away?

I hope reading this makes that answer a little more clear.

In either case, I need a fix something terrible, and that worries me.

- C