Still Here

I am an artist.

The title tastes rusty. Unworthy.

Fumbled from my keyboard and half-assed notes in notebook margins.

I am an artist

though i’ve barely touched a pen in months.

I’ve said it three times now in the mirror and twice it felt stupid and once it felt like the truest thing i’ve ever said about myself.

I’m going with the once.

I used to think there was a criteria.

A checklist somewhere I hadn’t been handed.

That other people were born already knowing the password and I was stood outside in the wrong shoes pretending I hadn’t noticed the door.

I spent a lot of time making myself smaller in case someone caught me believing in myself.

What a thing to be ashamed of.

I made things anyway.

Quietly. In borrowed time, in bad lighting, when I was tired and a little sad and probably should have been sleeping.

No one asked me to. No one noticed when I did.

I did it anyway.

I think that’s the whole definition, actually. I just didn’t know it yet.

There were years

I couldn’t find myself in anything I made. I’d look at what came out and think, who is she?

Not in a good way. In the way where you’ve drifted so far from something essential

that even your handwriting looks foreign.

I had to find my way back through the work itself. That’s what it’s for, I think.

Not the product. The finding.

I’m not going to tell you

I’m fearless now. I’m not.

I’m not going to tell you

I’m certain now. I’m not.

But I do the thing.

And afterwards I sit with it and think, yeah.

That was mine. I made that.

I am an artist.

Not because I arrived somewhere.

Not because it got easier or louder or more certain.

Because something in me refuses to live untranslated.

Because even on the days I haven’t written a word, haven’t picked anything up, haven’t felt like any of this belongs to me -

the title is still there. Rusty. Mine.