You grab a pen and a pencil and you look down at a hard-bound book stretched out across the desk in front of you. The first page is blank and open, that's why it's here.
If you could take a needle and prick yourself gently in the chest and draw out your emotions like Dumbledore's memories and drop them to make some kind of painting on the page, you'd do it. Even if the product wasn't something to fully satisfy your ambition, you'd do it anyway, just to get rid of the feeling that's like a ball of red yarn twisting and turning in your stomach. So you would prick your stomach with a small needle and slowly, carefully, pull the yarn out and feel it unravel inside you until it's gone. That's a metaphor well suited to you, if you could take out all of that emotion bubbling and welling and rolling around in your chest and weighing down your arms and use it to make something and create something, that's what you want. Because right now it feels like there are bags of sand weighing you down everywhere and somewhere inside you there it is, the spark and the flame, and it's trying to get out. Maybe it's not a bad feeling, not really, but you need to do something with it, because for you this is creativity.
So maybe you shouldn't name this book, you shouldn't give it any labels. Not a diary, not a journal, because every time you smack a label on a string of thoughts suddenly it becomes a thing. A lot of people underestimate the effort of maintaining things, of keeping things in order, of having them filed and organized under names in the little cabinets you have in your brain. It's fast, it's instantaneous, but you just want to block it with your fist because after it's filed away you don't look at it anymore, it's hidden. And maybe if you don't file it away it'll stay open like a wound for all the rest of time, a sore you never tend to, a seed you plant but never cultivate into something living, but at least that won't be as strong as that feeling of regret that mows you down every time you realize you've snapped the neck of another promise to yourself.
That ball of yarn stashed inside you, not so deep, shallowly planted enough that you could still prick your skin and it would all come leaking out in a brilliant display of red. You wonder why you keep trying, sometimes, you see all the other people in the world and all the things they make and all the beauty you only wish in that moment for you to become. You're a caterpillar, you want to be a butterfly like all those works of art and all those painters, but you have to choose a side of the canvas to be on because it seems like more often than not people kill themselves trying to be both. You want to work hard, you want to do things, you want to empty your heart and soul and spill all that red out into something and let it become your life, but what?
What do you want to do, what do you want to be? Echoes all around you all the time. You're older than you used to be, old enough to make your own decisions where it doesn't really matter and old enough that you're supposed to get lost inside yourself and go soul searching for your destiny, but young enough that all of those pointing fingers with the loud voices choose for you exactly what you want your life to be. And maybe you don't agree sometimes, but oh well, what else is to be expected?
The worst birthday present you ever got was this burden of self awareness, you're a fish raised on land and slowly they eased you into the sea but you've never touched water before so you don't know how to breath it in like you need to. Or maybe you're not a fish at all, maybe you're just a human, and that's the worst part of it all. Realizing every now and then the mass of your arms and legs and the tapping of your fingers when you're trying to think of something to say and how it all hooks up to your brain. Someone somewhere chose to bestow you with the miracle of human consciousness and it's a burden, everything's a burden when you're stuck in the in between.
And here's a map for those who've forgotten what it looks like: A cave that extends into a tunnel and most of the way is darkness and you're standing at the mouth. You'll have to map the way through with your hands and know that each time your fingers touch the wall it'll be something slimy or maybe a diamond that you'll always forget by the time your palm hits the next thing. Behind you is a place you know well but the sun is fading for you and it's time to move forwards and look for the light. You know there's light on the other side but you don't know how you'll get there. Even if there were a mountain you could climb over that would let you see the light at all times, you know you wouldn't choose it, because even if the feeling of each rock in your hand dulls with every breath you take moving forward you know some part of it will cling to you like a magnet and maybe they'll cling to your legs and make it hard for you to walk for a while but the important thing is learning to walk again with them on. It's important, you know that, even if you wish it weren't true.
The pencil taps down on the first page.