i know its a problem with me but i just dont know what to do about myself

i feel broken but art is usually the way i express myself when i feel broken

i feel like i dont want it enough and its kind of like dying

When I was eight, our class did a creative writing assignment where we wrote a letter to our future self. We were supposed to talk about our dreams and aspirations, what career we wanted, our families, sentimental junk like that. In my letter I imagined myself as a world famous writer who had first been published at twelve, who was rich and famous and well-respected. It was all I wanted in the whole wide world. I even had my first novel idea ready; I was gonna write a series about a gang of kids who visited a haunted house, and they got cursed. They died off one by one in gruesome paranormal accidents (such as a volcano of blood erupting from a shower) until the headstrong main character girl saved the day. After she undid the curse, all her dead friends miraculously came back to life as God’s reward to her for fixing everything. Then after that, there would be sequels where her and her friends went around saving other people from ghosts and demons…

Of course, my first grade teacher thought it was too macabre. Other kids in my class said it was gross and creepy. I tried to get my family members to read the draft I wrote down on looseleaf lined paper, but the only response I received was my maternal grandmother hysterically shrieking that the blood volcano was too violent. I couldn’t get past the first paragraph when I tried to write a sequel.

That was pretty much how it went the entire time I was in elementary school; teachers would praise my apparently advanced writing skill one moment and pin my stories behind potted plants or down in a low corner the next. The haunted house story was really the only violent one, too; but maybe even then there was something unloveable about me that compelled my teachers to always ferret away my creative efforts when it came time to hang stuff up in the classroom or on the outside wall.

Well, twelve came and went and the only thing that changed for me was schools. I woke up one morning and became horribly upset when I realized I hadn’t been published yet. I had been trying to write. I went to the library and read everything I could about traditional publishing. I wanted an agent, an editor, a book deal. I wanted it all so bad. I felt my heart break in the middle school library when I saw a book written by a twelve year old on the shelf. It wouldn’t have been so awful if I didn’t have the proof in front of me that it was possible and I failed. No one seemed to understand that.

Next I was fifteen, and then I was twenty two. Now I’m twenty six. I’m watching people younger than myself succeed and I’m realizing I don’t have what it takes. It’s all I’ve ever wanted and I don’t want it enough.