I am, still, constantly introspecting and attempting to remember all of who I am. Because sometimes it happens, that we lose our self mid-journey. Forgetting what used to make our soul fly, our eyes twinkle, our hearts sing… We find ourselves only knowing we used to be free but can’t quite relive nor replicate the feeling of it.
Like a word at the tip of our tongue that should easily roll out because we know it’s there… stuck at the tip. Same thing when recalling feelings that used to be the core frequency we dance in, once upon a time.
So far, I reclaimed my passion for making art and writing poetry… it was a long road to pick up my parts. Piece by piece. I rediscovered that I’m multi-passionate. I got reacquainted with my creativity and it filled me with much hope. But re-indulging with passions my inner child knew too well, with a grown body that hasn’t been oiled with creativity? I thought it’s worth going back but it will be quite challenging. I would need to start growing from where i left them again. I almost shrugged it off even when Im yearning, but luckily I found inspiration. People who reminded me of how I used to be. People who are accepted as they are.
Now having motivation WITH inspiration, I decided I’ll push thru. Regaining my zest for drawings and writing poetry by starting to make them again, I said to myself I was gonna choose one to focus on. Then suddenly there it was. A nagging feeling that insists I have to embody all my facets. It tugs at me whenever I’d wonder if I should concentrate on just one.
It’s like I feel this serious sadness in behalf of the other parts of me left behind. Im not even kidding. I would feel like crying or I would totally pause from doing anything. I guess it was because I found me. I found several parts of me that setting one aside felt like abandoning myself all over again. I was conflicted and so unsure.
Funny thing is, all of who I am? very few people know about anyways. So it seems I’m having these feelings towards the different sides of me when people around me hardly even know one aspect of me at all. It’s like, oh Im so complex contrary to what people around me got to know, but it’s only a secret. A quiet secret that comes with an internal turmoil over what would make me feel complete. And it’s all happening unbeknownst to everybody. It felt absurd at first because why all the fuss? But that feeling won.
It made me dip into the the dark pits of my emotions.. I would look in the mirror and sadness would sweep in. “If only they know the truth about me. If only people know me fully. If only they accept me for who I am. I can live freely… breathe easy…” I think these thoughts discreetly while the bubbly me goes about the day, playing pretend.
When it came to a point that Im crying inside already, thats when I decided I wanted to begin expressing my authenticity. And I mean fully, even if it would confuse others with the different things I am about. I realized I cannot live my whole life tucked inside and operating only as what was already expected of me: the version of me that adapted to everything around me since I was young.
When you didn’t get the chance to really come as you are and grow centered in on the genuine parts of you, then that venturous child who embodied that for you got left by the roadside. That young me who later on would be the inner child I’ll go back to healing… when it seems there’s not one rock left that hasn’t made me stumble yet.
I thought about it, what if it was merely the construct of us that got established as we grew up? The construct we allowed to be built around our true self. Usually for others or because of others. Others as in authority figures, peers… and I conformed voluntarily, no excuses.
Although some changes in our nature were enforced, some we chose to become for others or as defense mechanisms. Consciously or otherwise… Therefore the persona gets built on external suggestions and situational influences. We forget we have so much to offer. We forget we are multi-passionate.
I know it didn’t happen abruptly, but rather just gradually… I know it’s too dramatic to say that none of who we truly are is left. But the best parts of us, crucial to finding the right direction, are usually the ones that gets sacrificed. Maaan, It wasn’t even entirely me I was building.
I realize, so it wasn’t even 100% ME who people met and got to experience after i dropped the things that’s supposedly truly me. Enlightened a bit, I realized i can correct things and dismantle some of what has been built from the outside. Afterall, I am still myself the whole time, only… within.
So back to this sadness again.. I found that what I’m describing — that sadness when focusing on one aspect while others fall quiet — is a kind of creative grief. It’s common among multi-passionate, multi-potentialites, creative generalists, or simply those who refuse to reduce themselves to a single label anymore.
Now I’m not readily accustomed to these big words. However I read about these words when I was looking to people who are same as me but are already thriving in being multi-passionate. So basically, this creative grief, common to people who have multiple passions, whether experienced later in life or earlier, sounds like the true self crying out to be set free and be embodied fully.
“You don’t need to be built, you just need to be set free so you can hone yourself thru applying that true self from there onwards”. This is what that grief was suggesting.
I want to talk about that creative grief because it called out the very antithesis to embodying all of my fragments. And that is the notion that doing many things makes you scattered. Which can be false if you remember yourself more alive having different passions once upon a time!
That creative grief is telling me, “you can conform to that false idea all you want but you will continue feeling grief for all the beautiful parts of you that are not chosen”. It is telling me, “Choose yourself wholly. All of you”.
So I’m telling myself again, “Being many things don’t make me scattered, it makes me whole” and this feeling of being whole again had me wanting to come out and truly live. It’s the feeling that triggers you to remember, this life is for me to live, not the proxy of me, not the ghost of me and whatever you call the curated version of me.
FYI a lot of times, as I start to honor my my natural inklings, it required that i see the false me. I am not even further along in this process, I have so much to work on. But I think that is for another topic altogether, I’m talking about passions here.
I’m talking about from forgetting I had any to offer to this world, to remembering I have a few things to give. At least that jaded, stagnant part of me bereft of the creative flow was unblocked, primed and oiled once again. That part I’m starting to heal? it’s merely one among many. However, I think creativity is one huge mana to recover don’t you think so?
Because of that creative grief, I published an artbook that features my beginner artworks with my thoughts on starting and my creative processes and included few pieces of my poetry. After that, I published my first poetry collection of 80 poems and I didn’t even know I accumulated that many since i was also working on my art and just wrote whenever I feel poetic. Now I have two books under my name and Im planning on publishing more… all because I now accept who I really am. I am proud to be multi-passionate.
Out of sentimenality… or as an example, Unblocked was published and therefore marks the first of many and the start of indefinitely birthing creations.
My testimony on “We sow seeds, we reap.” Deep beneath My Surface is a collection of 80 poems written in between artworks, day job, home life and everything else.
