When I was a kid, I was a prolific creator.

I wrote stories and built worlds to go with them, created languages and alphabets so I could exchange coded letters with my friends. I drew and painted, wrote songs and played piano and guitar and danced with abandon. I spent almost every waking moment making things. And I did it all without worrying whether it made sense or sounded good or, really, whether anyone else saw it at all. I created because there was art, music and magic inside of me and it was bursting to come out. It was as natural as breathing.

Then, at some point, it changed.

I learned that people were watching, and that they were passing judgement on my creations. I learned that if I did things a certain way, people would praise me, think I was special, hang my drawings on the wall, and if I did it another way, they would pass me over or even worse, laugh at my attempts. My focus started to shift from “art for art’s sake” to creating for other people’s approval. Not entirely, of course, but the thought was at the back of my mind. For a while, when I made something, I would eagerly show it to anyone who would indulge me, hoping they would tell me how special and talented I was. After awhile, though, the fear of rejection outweighed the hope for praise, and I stopped showing off my art altogether.

I’m not sure if depression was a cause or effect of the loss of connection to my creativity, because it happened in tandem. Making art became painful. Every drawing I did made my chest get tighter and every song I tried to sing felt like dragging a barbed wire out of my throat. Art became deeply connected to a sense of low self-worth. When something didn’t come out how I wanted it to, I saw it as a reflection of my lack of talent and value as an artist. I didn’t like my art because it wasn’t good enough, and instead of putting in more work to get better, I did it less to avoid the embarrassment and frustration.

It wasn’t that I stopped making art. I made far less than before, true, but I still forced myself through the process because I still needed to do it, and I always will. It’s just that it became a source of self doubt, anger, and fear instead of playfulness and joy like it had been. It became arduous where it used to be a place of freedom.

Eventually, I stopped making music or writing at all, and went months at a time without drawing. By the time my mindset had percolated for a few years, and I had become so hyper-focused on the outcome of my creation, so blinded by what I wanted it to be, that I could rarely even get past the first sentence of a story, the first line of a drawing, the first chords of a song.

The art I did do was reduced to covering a song here and there, or copying line by line from reference images. Which, by the way, are valid forms of art, but even these forays were few and far between, and without original creation in the mix, it felt passionless and boring. More than that, I had lost my patience, forgotten what the process was about, and many drawings went unfinished because they didn’t start looking good quick enough.

Around the beginning of high school I started smoking pot, and that helped. When I was high, I could get out of that obsessive headspace and let the art come out of me freeform. I would put the pen on the page and follow its lead. Loose curves and hooks would form themselves into dragons wings, fractals and landscapes. I could finally get lost in it for hours on end like I did as a kid. I would forget that there was an end product at all, so absorbed in the little twists and turns, turning mistakes into something beautiful, filling up the pages and then going back to add depth and shadow and tiny details.

Still, even with that crutch, I didn’t make art sober. So when I had to quit getting high two and a half years ago, I lost that outlet again.

In the couple of years since then, I have started to open back up to my creative flow. I have re-learned some of what art originally meant for me, and I’m starting to remember how it felt to create without judgement. I crave that feeling more than anything. Although I’m starting to figure out why I am the way I am with art, I have yet to reconnect with the raw, joyful feeling that I had as a kid—or with the carefree attitude and curiosity that came with smoking weed.

Maybe it’s impossible to get to that place now. But I’m ready to start making art again. I think art and pain are closely tied, and I might never be able to separate the two completely. But I don’t want to keep letting fear and pain keep me from writing and drawing and making music. My creativity has been forced to manifest in short spurts, half-assed attempts and the handful of drawings from the last few years that I’m actually proud of.

So what’s stopping me now?

I have plenty of excuses. I’m a student and I’m incredibly busy. My ideas aren’t good enough, the execution isn’t just right, my voice isn’t strong enough, I just need more time to polish up before I share it with anyone else. I haven’t been pushed hard enough by the people around me.

I’m great at building walls to hide behind because I am afraid of creating. I am afraid of judgement, rejection, and of producing something imperfect. But I know that praise, acceptance and perfection are not the purpose of creation. I’ve known that since I was a kid, back when I let it flow through me unhampered. The purpose of creation is… creation. Expression of the self, the joy and pain of process, the elation of seeing a part of yourself manifest in color or sound or movement.

It’s not going to be easy all of a sudden, just because I’ve said all this. It’s going to keep being messy and painful and annoying and frustrating. But I’m not going to censor myself anymore for the sake of perfection or safety. I'm going to try and stop making excuses. Because there is art, music and magic inside of me and it is still bursting to come out.

All of the art included in this post is mine

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