A Brightly Colored Missing Woman

When exactly does one’s creative spirit die?

Thinking back through my 26-years I don’t remember a moment or incident that caused my creative spirit to head on to its next life. I just remember it not being with me anymore.

I assume it left because I quit calling on it. I didn’t know it at the time but I desperately wanted to part with assertive creativity. I wanted it to leave my small body so I could make room for more important things, more socially acceptable things.

I guess it was school that reminded me there were places within me that needed filling with normal. I wanted kids to like me and I knew kids liked normal.

When I was at home I was happy. My voice lived there with me and I was always creating. The thing about being an only child is that you are often left to your own devices. I needed creativity to be my dear friend and sister. I played games in imaginary worlds that were completely of my own making. I painted and drew and imagined bigness in my small places.

Most notably, when I was at home I spoke. Like a lot. My parents talked to me like I was an adult and I seldom was at a lack for words.

My world was not the same at school. As I moved through the grades of my Christian elementary school silence moved with me. By the time I was in middle school silence had its hand around my throat and speaking my thoughts in front of more than a few people was enough to squeeze the life from my body.

It’s no surprise that creativity didn’t want to live there because creativity is loud. If I would have chosen to let creativity speak it would not only have been heard by me but the people around me.

I placed my hand around creativity's throat and squeezed her silent.

I assume a lost creative spirit is kind of like a missing woman. One day you find her missing but you never truly want to admit that she is gone. You imagine small signs of her in your everyday life and hope she will come walking back through your front door any moment.

After a prolonged absence, you start to believe she’s really gone. You imagine her body lost as it’s slowly being reclaimed by the earth.

But for a fortunate few, missing women sometimes do come home. Young girls kidnapped for years have occasionally been reunited with their families and lost hikers have been found in the desert.

This is how it’s been for my creative spirit and me. At points, I thought she was completely gone. I even imagined her colorful body lost to me and discarded somewhere in a ditch.

But, a few months ago I heard a knock at my door and opened it to find creativity standing there weathered and scared. I invited her in and she told me of the darkness she’s experienced since we parted during my childhood.

She was not dead after all and I assume that’s because creativity can’t die. It would have been easy for her to move on to her next life with a more receptive host but the space in my body was the only one that would fit her.

My creative spirit said she did leave me a few signs that she was still living, a gentle knock at the window or a small scribble made at my desk, but she didn’t know she could ask to come back.

I had made a volatile home for her here and she did not feel welcome. I can’t blame her for her disappearance and I take full responsibility for it.

These days she and I are working through a severe case of creative spirit PTSD but things are good. I am gentle with her and remind her that her place is here and I will never turn her out to wander in the darkness again.