I think about what it mean to be an artist, every now and then.

When I was just out of university, I had trouble calling myself an artist since I’ve been in school for four years learning about all these great artists in the past that paved the way for all the abundant styles and complex theories that are accepted and exist in the world today.

“who am I to call myself an artist,” was the follow up to that question back then.

It seemed grandiose and arrogant to call myself as an artist. 

It’s been several years since then, with many mountains and valleys behind my shrugged shoulders. 

As I sit here today, with my nose deep in yet another blank piece of paper, scribbling soft pastel with the same intense, euphoric agony enveloped over my heart as it did the first time I laid pencil on a paper, the question pops up in my head again.

The insecure mindset to the word since the beginning seems to have solidified my initial reaction and feeling toward it. The word itself now has taken on an unpleasantly sour note and a superficial shape in my mind permanently. 

Maybe that’s why I feel so lost always. For a while, I’ve been searching for a word that is much more manageable to comprehend and digest in my mind, while in truth, I was trying to run away from this mountain of a word. I was a coward, looking for short cuts. But I always come back to draw at night, only to find myself holding onto that time so tightly in fear of it fleeting, as it always does, inevitably and too quickly.

When that question popped into my head today, I realized that I have created two of me in result of my efforts over the years. I found myself putting on a mask just to get through the day, so when I’m back home, I can come back to my drawing panel to revive myself. Allow myself to breathe after many hours under the mask.

Maybe I’m asking that question now again since I’m noticing that my mask is raggedy and worn down. It’s outdated and so very obvious in its purpose to outsiders. The mask I painstakingly made to help me trudge through the day over several years as gone through wear and tear and in desperate need of fixing, if not a replacement. I see that it is temporary and inefficient.

It’s not easy to deal with myself, let alone two. It’s tiring now. It exhausts me.

While in this contemplative time, I’m desperately looking for a solution I know that aren’t there. I’m dreaming of a fantasy while sewing up an awful tear on the right side of the cheek and trimming off some overgrown eyebrow hairs on the mask.

And so it goes.

So very forgetful. How pathetic all this is sometimes.

You run and run and run on the wheel until you forget why you were on it in the first place, and you’re tired. You stumble off. 

You sit down and slowly catch your breath.

While idle, your thoughts start to race in your head and you wonder about everything around you, questioning things that cannot be explained.

You feel yourself going mad until you notice a wheel beside where you are sitting.

You get up, get on the wheel and start treading on it.

There’s a sense of relief in the physical stimulation, relieved of your impossible thoughts.

You run and run and run on the wheel until you forget why you were on it in the first place, and you’re tired. You stumble off. 

Sadly, happy again in my own way. Misfortune happens to be my fortune, unfortunately.

I’ve been to the other side for a while, and after sitting patiently through it all, I must say it’s not for me. Ironically, I encountered my darkest days at my supposed happiest times. I probably won’t be going back. I feel relieved and melancholic. 

I don’t think I was ever meant to be happy. Happiness makes me sad. Happiness makes me feel empty. Once I reach happiness, I quickly lose meaning behind everything, as heavy as that sounds.

I’ve been slowly digesting ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’ by Robert Burton and the existence of that book gives me a sense of relief knowing that it may not be just me who finds genuine comfort in feelings of melancholy and others alike. I mean, there must be a reason why it drives a person to write an excruciating number of pages on the sole topic alone. It’s a thick fucking book. I’ll never get through it all.

When I was young and drawing with childish, tamper-tantrum-like angst, I thought my goal was to purge out of me all that sad, desperate feelings so I can finally run through an open field of pristine, lush green grass toward my happily ever after.

Maybe along the way, I became the person I meant to purge out. In making the effort to purge out those thoughts, I relived it over and over again until I got lost in it.

Or maybe, I was that person from the very beginning and I was just in solid denial until now. How messed up would that be? 

Ha-ha-ha! (ending in a happy note so this post isn’t a dragggggggg)