Curate, connect, and discover
I never wanted to exist. To be created. But now I have to live, I have to create in return. But how does one do that when one’s world is nothing. There isn’t joy, but there also isn’t pain. I simply just exist. I’m not sure how. But I must create, that’s what I was created for. But creation originates from something. A feeling, a thought, an experience. I’ve had those, but none good enough to create.
I tried learning the piano when I was 5, my mother stopped my lessons when I turned 6. In the one year I had created nothing but noise. Not pleasant noise.
I tried painting when I was 9, I followed a step by step tutorial, but my painting still came out…wrong. The colours all looked boring and the image itself looked like…nothing. It was just paint on a canvas.
I tried writing when I was 13. Maybe the new experiences of a teenager would inspire me. Maybe I could make my english teacher proud. But my words felt empty. My english teacher returned the paper without an expression. It had gotten a decent mark, but it wasn’t good enough.
By age 16 I gave up. I couldn’t create. It brought nothingness and it was never good enough. I wasn’t good enough. It was strange, trying to create, but the people around me always responded to my work with silence or a neutral expression, as if it made them feel nothing. I started to feel like perhaps I was nothing.
At age 18 I had no friends. I had become a no one. I disappeared into the nothingness of whatever I did. Until I met a girl. I had hummed a song. Nothing specific. Just a tune. I had zoned out. The girl was sat next to me. She had gasped and said that it was, “beautiful”. I made sure she was talking to me. She laughed and nodded. She was very passionate about music and talked my ear off the rest of the period. A feeling stirred. She walked with me to my next class and hummed the tune I created. I created. Purely on accident. She teased that it would be stuck in her head all day. I saw her again the next day and she was still humming my tune. She asked if I ever thought of making music. I told her I didn’t make stuff. She laughed.
“Of course you make stuff, you make carbon dioxide, you make sounds, beautiful and catchy ones at that.” she laughed and the feeling stirred again. “I guess.” I replied. “You make me laugh.” she said, but she had whispered it, as if the sentence wasn’t supposed to be heard. “Oh, well, that’s on accident. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. I haven’t laughed in a while, so thank you.” she said. “Why have you not laughed?” I couldn’t help but ask. She gave me a shy smile. “I had nothing that made me laugh.” I felt my heart plummet. I blinked. That didn’t make sense. I was nothing. How could I make her laugh if I was nothing. It didn’t make sense.
She smiled at me again and my breath hitched. “I’m Alice by the way, I never actually introduced myself.”
I hesitated. “I’m..” nothing, “…Robin. I’m Robin.”
Maybe it wasn’t that I couldn’t create, maybe it was that the people around me just couldn’t understand it.