Starry Night

As people, we have this inherent inclination to make everything beautiful. It's one of my favorite things about us: despite the odds and circumstances, we can find something interesting in whatever we are faced with. As much as I love it, I also know how dangerous and ignorant the need to romanticize everything can be. We create tropes out of trauma and pedestal people who never asked to be. 

One of my biggest pet peeves is the question But doesn't it help you be so creative? that often follows any comment about struggling to live with mental illnesses. I hate the way people talk about Van Gogh, that he ate yellow paint to be happy, I hate the idea that an artist must be tortured. When people bring up Robin Williams, it is always to talk about how the saddest people work the hardest to make others happy, when I talk about my own trauma people feel the need to commend my kindness, and I hate that tragedy and beauty are so closely tied to each other that you cannot speak of one without referencing the other.

I understand that people mean well. It's hard to think about other people hurting or struggling, especially if it's in ways or with things that you can't understand. It's normal to want to look for the silver lining. I do appreciate the intent. However, I have a few stories, commentaries, and suggestions for other options.

Van Gogh painted "Starry Night" from an asylum window. The works that you so closely associate with him, the paintings you look at to herald his genius, were done while he was actively working on living with his illnesses and struggles. It's easy to hear about the pain someone experiences and equate it with the magnificence of what they have created, but I think there is something even more beautiful in the concept that we are at our best artistically when we are at our healthiest and most stable. I can promise you the stars look more beautiful to me now, when I'm at the point where I am committed to living and trying, than they were when I was staring at the sky and wishing everything could just vanish. 

When I stopped sleeping earlier this year, I started painting. I had no idea what I was doing, and to be completely honest, I still don't really, but when I put energy into creating something, I was able to calm the thoughts that raced through my mind. It was a good outlet. However, it wasn't until I started trying to sleep, trying to take care of myself again, that I had any ideas for what I could paint. All of my early watercolors were recreations, taken directly from references and translated into the new medium. I had the capacity to create, but I wasn't exactly being creative. Art was a tool, but my pain and my struggles were not a muse for me. When I did start coming up with my own ideas, the people that I cared about, the ones who helped me the most, were what I drew inspiration from. I still can't paint anything for myself, but I am full of ideas of things I can create for other people. 

The things that have hurt me the most are things I still can't really write about. They are always veiled in metaphor and and allegory, because when I try to speak plainly, I choke. However, the things that I love are overflowing with words and rhythms. I am not at a loss when it comes to writing about them. I can write you a hundred poems about the things and people that I love, and I agonize over them far less than I do the ones that are borne from painful memories. 

I am not kind because people were cruel to me. I was kind before I was ever hurt--I was hurt in part because I cared too much about the people doing the hurting to remove myself from the situation. I was nice to a fault, and cared for and about others more than I ever paid attention to myself. I am kind in spite of the people who have broken my heart. Their existence did not open my eyes to the pain other people might be in, I saw it before I ever experienced it. I was not made by these people, I am the way I am because I refused to let someone else destroy me. While I am influenced by the people I have had in my life, I am the one who chose to keep going when someone else left. I am the one who decided being there for people was worth it, even when no one was there for me. I am the one who decided there was good that could come from letting people see me for who I am, even with all the evidence I had to prove otherwise. 

One of my best friends was in a car accident when she was fourteen. It almost killed her. Everyone talks to her about how brave she's been, how incredible her determination is in the aftermath. And she is brave, she is incredible, she is one of the most determined people I have ever known, but here's the thing: I knew her before the accident. She was every one of those things before. Being on life support didn't make her stronger, or braver, or more determined: it kept her alive. She was already herself. 

I have known countless people in the arts. Many of us have stories of being bullied, or being hurt by other people. So many people attribute our ability to make others feel things to the pain we have felt and the need we had to express ourselves. The thing is, most of us were being made fun of, abused, or hurt in part because we chose to express ourselves. I was a very artistic and sensitive child, and a lot of people didn't understand that. It was easy to make fun of me because I did things differently. I didn't turn to music or acting or writing because I was being hurt. I'd chosen them long before then, and I struggled with that choice because so often it had hurt me. I didn't become a good actor or singer or writer until I allowed myself to actually love doing it, despite the things people said or the looks I got. Art wasn't just a place that accepted me, it was a place I had to accept myself. Catharsis only works if you are willing to allow yourself to feel and to create, creation isn't the natural progression of catharsis. 

Having ADHD means focusing is really difficult for me when I haven't taken my medication. However, even when I don't take my meds, I can do something creative. It isn't because art has this magical ability to pull me into the present, it's because I love it. Coloring helps me when I'm anxious, but it isn't just because it's something creative to focus on, it's because I love combining colors and seeing something come out of black and white spaces. I am not a good actor because I have been hurt, I am not a good singer because I was bullied, I do not write well because no one else would listen to me: I am an artist because I loved it, I loved it enough to put time and energy into it when I didn't even have the will to take care of myself. I am good at what I do because I loved it enough to learn and keep trying, despite the odds and the dozens of voices telling me it was stupid, unwise, or useless. I was willing to expend the extra energy it took me to focus because I cared. 

In my faith, we believe that before we ever came to Earth we existed as spirits. This means that I believe that I am not just who I am because of everything I experience in life: I believe that I was myself before I was ever born. I personally believe part of the purpose we have in this life is to learn who we have always been, and how to be true to the divine spark we each have. If I am an artist now, I must have been an artist then, and trials and heartache and illness are symptoms of mortality. I believe creativity is an attribute of divinity, for who is more creative than the one who created all we see and experience? All that is good must come from God, it can't be created by traumatic experiences or abuse or disorder. 

I don't pretend to know who I would have been if I had lived a different life. I can't with any certainty create a version of myself that isn't who I have become, and I know our experiences have an impact on our choices. But that's all they impact: the choices. At the end of the day, I am still the person choosing how I will live and who I will be. Having bipolar disorder didn't make me creative, I chose to nurture my creativity. Being hurt didn't make me kind, I chose to be kind even when I knew many people didn't make that choice. I didn't choose to be an arts major and minor because I had no other options, I chose to go into what I loved because no other options mattered as much to me.

Like I said earlier, people mean well when they attribute trials with triumphs and illness with inspiration. But they do a disservice when the chalk anyone else's growth or abilities to anything other than who they are and the choices they've made. We don't get to choose the trials we have in this life, just like we don't choose the eyes or hair we are born with, all we can choose is what we will do with the palates that we are given. I would much rather hear a compliment about my creations and passions that doesn't lean on the crutch of my disabilities. 

As Kaladin says in Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson, "'Ten spears go to battle...and nine shatter. Did that war forge the one that remained? No...All the war did was identify the spear that would not break.'" (1176)