[Crossposted to LJ]

Let me tell you a story about a girl.

She was a clever girl, but far too manic for most people; she reached too far into tangents and delved a little too deep into the extrapolation of possible realities for their comfort. You see, she'd had it tough for the last few years, starved, battered down by the gloomy hallmarks of monotonous people and cruel intentions. Then in a burst of colour, sudden and brilliant, she coalesced into what people now see when they look at her.

Her problem, and her gift, was that she was a child. She let forth with unprecedented spouts of creative, insane, joyous chatter. She wrote, she painted, she sang, she screamed, she capslocked the hell out of her life. In her ignorance was cruelty, but she didn't know much of pain or suffering, and didn't recognize it when she doled it out.

She grew up a little. Simmered in her juices. Her halcyon days were over. Resentment crept in. She was stifling and being stifled, old friends and golden, nostalgic times fleeing into the fogginess of memory, leaving only the harsh abandonment of adolescent realization. The world is not rose-coloured. She had known this, but it had always been external, and within herself she had always felt safe, secure, loved and adored, while now she felt betrayed by herself. Set in routines that were impossible to reroute, cursed with growths pronounced inoperable that were poisoning the flow of blood to her brain, and hence, her imagination.

She blamed herself. She blamed the world. She hated watching herself begin to wither with bitterness and crumble due to internal combustion. Self-doubt and crises of faith plagued her, paralyzed the blinding energy that had so recently been her defining characteristic.

But you know what? This kid just needed a good kick in the head. A suitable man for the job was found in the form of a wise bodyguard in a film about a pretty, pretty princess, who once quoted a brilliant woman. He said: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

She felt like giving up. If all she was going to cause was harm, what was the point in continued existence, in continued productivity and creation? If all creative impulses were to inevitably be shot down by her own doubts, her own ignorance, and above all, her own internal and opposing dialogues, then what was the point? Creativity tempered by reality ne'er did run smooth to genius.

But nobody was saying 'stop'. Nobody was telling her she was a horrible, ignorant gnat of a person. Don't stop writing. I want to tell this girl: Don't give up. Don't yell and scream and rend your garments at the setback of progressive thought. Don't be scared. You can do this. You can keep writing. Just write better. Listen. Learn. This is not a call for a complete and utter halt to production and your personal creations. For god's sake, take this knowledge, offered freely, search out some more, and just try.

Feel shame if you must, if shame is what this has provoked in you, for yes, shame is a learning tool, and it drives us on to remove the ignorance that led to that shame. But don't let guilt paralyze you. Guilt is the game of a self-pity that we engage in when we don't know how to fix things. She should be as much as she should be, no matter how terrifying it is to realize that everyone's been watching her walking around with her pants down for a while now, and that she really has no idea how to even begin to start constructing a new pair of pants. Ignorance, as a good friend of mine has said, is not ignobility. It is shameful, and dangerous, but not the sign of an ugly heart. We are all only human.

This girl is everywhere. She is me, in many ways, but in this case the girl I am talking to and about is RBR.

Yes, your halcyon days are over. So what? Here be beasties of depth. And you know what? You're all in this together, so rally the troops, sit down at the map table and start charting some new territory, or better yet, start erasing the lines and barricades of the old. It'll be a nice, family-friendly, educational adventure. Don't let the kraken scare you away. He has the wisdom of the ages, and he'll talk to you if you hunt him down, if you can look past the terrifying visage of something so far beyond your ken or control, if you just listen.

Ursula K. LeGuin once wrote, "The creative adult is the child who has survived." Peter Pan was so scared of growing up, he never even tried. Wendy was the one brave enough to keep living, to keep trying, to keep growing.


In conclusion: don't be scared. Be smart.