I yearn to create

inside me there is a little girl with a lot to say, and she hasn't had the chance to speak in 23 years.

still from the play “RED” by John Logan about artist Mark Rothko that I had to watch for a class recently

I’ve always been a yapper according to everyone who’d seen me grow up.

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when I was a kid, I apparently had no fear. I’d talk to strange grownups like I was their equal, and I had opinions on everything. I took every question at face value, and gave them careful consideration, even ones like “who’s your favorite, mommy or daddy?”

“well mommy’s my favorite when it comes to x y and z, while daddy is the best to do a b and c with, so I guess the answer is ‘it depends on the situation’ but my real favorite regardless is my little brother” I would say, dead serious. this is still true. my brother is still my favorite person in the world.

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I genuinely miss and admire that little girl, but unfortunately, I’m not sure if she is still around. at some point I became too much of a smart mouth, too much of a little know-it-all for most people to deal with. they’d tell me to stop talking back at them or stop correcting them in front of other people, that no one would want me as their wife with that attitude of mine.

how many of you have been told, explicitly or implicitly, the same message?

of course, my family aren’t the only ones who thought that. as a woman, my voice wasn’t and still isn’t valued in a patriarchal world. I’m in the States right now, but I wasn’t born and raised here. my native country where I grew up until I was 15 years old was a lot more patriarchal than even the US.

I internalized the idea that my value came from domestic labor, and that I was to study hard all my life, to get into a good university for the purposes of meeting a husband who would be rich and intellectual, and he would take care of me for the rest of my life.

evidently, that didn’t happen, and I do not think it ever will, but somewhere along the way, from all the silencing, all the trauma, all the arguments, the fights, the attempts to stand my ground to my mom, to my family, to society overall, I lost her.

I lost the little girl who sassily corrected grown adults when they got a fact about history or dinosaurs wrong. a girl who was never flustered and could come up with an answer to anything. a girl who danced, recited poetry, reenacted scenes from cartoons in the tiny living room of her childhood apartment to her mother’s camera or made silly faces to keep her baby brother laughing watching her from his crib. a girl who stood up to his bullies and her own bullies and forced her friends to be his friends and give them both the proper respect.

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now that I am 23, almost 24 I think I’ve finally realized how much I lost when I lost her, and I’ve been taking my time grieving the loss. “it’s okay, she’s still inside of you” you might say, trying to comfort me, and that is so sweet of you, and I agree. I’m sure she’s still in there somewhere, I’m just not sure that I could ever fully bring her back.

we experienced the world and we both changed, and I don’t know that that’s reversible, you know? it’s like when you crinkle a piece of paper into a ball, and even if you open it back up, flatten it as best as you can, the creases will still be there; the paper can never be as flawless as it was before. or if you drop a plate, and you may put the pieces back together, glue them together even, but the cracks will still show.

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I’ve been having a lot of honest conversations with my mom lately, both of us slowly forgiving each other for everything we’d said to one another, and she confessed that the thing she regrets most about the way she raised me was convincing me that “mommy knows best”.

“I think I may have stifled your individuality, and buried your voice, and I can tell, because I didn’t do that to your brother, and he is completely different”.

and suddenly all the times someone asked for my opinion, and I was blanking out made sense. I saw all the times I went back and forth trying to decide what to order in a new restaurant and ended up going with the same thing I’ve had a million times in a new light. switching majors from fine arts to psychology only to end up almost graduating and realizing I maybe don’t want to do either, and my two minors came together in my brain.

I was never assured that whatever decision I made was okay, I was never even allowed to make a decision for myself. my fashion choices were never validated, my opinions on culture, arts, politics were always opposed, until I became too scared to have an opinion, not to mention expressing it. I never learned what I wanted to be and never let myself dream of what I would like my life to be like if money wasn’t a concern, if no one could dissuade me from it, if being me was okay.

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as I’m remembering who I was and coming to terms with the fact that I’ve changed, I’ve been yearning to rediscover who I am now.

this desire inspires me to be as intentional as I can about everything - the clothes that I buy, the food that I cook, eat, buy. how I do my hair, my phone case, my accessories, my tech. the coffee shops I go to, the things I consume online and the things I post, the music I listen to. the things I read about, and the things I say out loud.

I want care, attention and intentionality to be felt in everything about me. I want my existence to stand for something.

I want to write well-researched pieces on Substack about pop culture and make video essays on YouTube about stuff I care about.

I want to curate what I consume and always put out a little more. I want to try things out by myself, before I read reviews or consume other people’s opinions about them, from local cafes to all forms of media. that is why I’m going to try to reduce my screen times and mindless media consumption such as scrolling on feeds like TikTok and Instagram.

I want to create again - I haven’t picked up a paintbrush in 3 years.

I want to try things in a safe space where I will be allowed to stumble along the way. I want to be my own safe space as well.

I want to be proud of me, even if people I wish were proud of me are not.

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I yearn to create. and I suspect I am not the only one. I mean, repressed creativity is the thesis behind Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way and that book seems to have remained very relevant since its original release 22 years ago.

I’m not sure I have an idea of how to finish this post, so I think I’m just going to cut it here, for fear of rambling too much. thank you for reading and let me know if you relate.

apologies for disappearing without notice again, and for not writing about the things I said I would be writing about. I started this post a couple of days before the election, with shaky confidence (but confidence nevertheless) in Harris, and then we all know what happened. it took a couple of days to fully process. now here I am finishing it November the 10th, and I think it is more important than ever for me, you and all of us to express ourselves through our art, and everything we do, and to find community and safety with one another.

hope you all are doing well, and I hope you find the holidays to be magical despite anything and everything.

if you’re still here, I love you.

if you’re new here, thank you.

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until next time, whether it’s tomorrow or in three weeks!!!

you can now support me with a one-time donation (only if you feel like it, of course)!

btw here’s a link to the version of the play I mentioned at the beginning: