How to be me in the company of another:

Step one-blog in private. Use passwords and screennames to my advantage. Does the fear remain even when one has little possibility of seeing what is there?

Creativity lacks in my brain due to fear. Fear that someone will hear me, fear that someone will read what I have written, and fear that someone will see what I have painted and label it as ordinary. I am unable to overcome fear and let my mind do the acting. It makes me crazy. How do I just forget what that elusive eye is going to think of me and just let myself create? I long for my own space, where nobody can see me, but then what do I do with the invisible spectators that haunt my every move? Do I feign their death somehow? Trick my mind into believing that they have departed and now, once and for all, I am alone?

And then there is the laziness. I sit here wondering what I should do. I think, if there was enough time, I would write or I would paint. But then that time that I so longed for appears and I think, nah, I don’t feel like it. I’m too bored. Too bored to do something. If I didn’t fear the spectators, would I enjoy the act of painting, rather than dread it? I like it, but then I hate it. I want to be that creative person I have always admired, but I cannot allow myself to open up. Because even when I have an idea, something in my head says no, that is a terrible idea, nobody will like it. And that is even before I even tried it. My brain is its own enemy. My brain longs for thing and then tricks itself into not doing those things.

I am currently reading “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” and it is scarily familiar. I feel as though Milan Kundera is speaking to me and many others like me. Perhaps he is speaking of himself and that is why his writing the book was made possible. Whatever it may be, it has so far described my every thought. I am the person who goes from lover to lover, place to place. As soon as comfort begins to settle in, I am gone. But then I long to be satisfied with what I have. I wish I could just live in a place long enough to meet a few friends and grow as a person, as a family, as a life. I have escaped right before things begin to turn and life begins to become familiar. Why don’t I just stay then? Why was Spain so terrible when I experienced no stress and I painted like a feind? Why was San Francisco so bad when I have lots of great friends and I played the guitar like a fiend? What is that thing that drives me away from something? I need the answer because life is becoming unbearable to live. The stress that has found its way into my chest between my ribs is galling at my heart. Freedom is all I long for. It is my own meaning of life. Why is it so hard to come by?