I’ve always been cagey around sharing my art. Same goes for my writing. When I was in middle school, I wrote a poem; it wasn’t finished, but I shared it with my family anyway. I have no memory about the poem’s contents, but I remember liking it. Without my knowledge, my mother shared it with extended family––cousins, aunts, uncles. I was mortified. 

In my adolescence, I held this memory accountable as to why I guarded my art so often. In high school, I even despised the comments people made on my “doodling” (I hated that word. Even though that’s technically what I was doing). I wanted people to see my penciled doodles as sketches of future art pieces or flashes of a good idea. But I never published or released any art pieces.

Even broader, I held accountable the era I grew up in. Everything is permanent. Because of the internet, you can’t make mistakes anymore. Everyone’s fake online because they’re afraid to be imperfect (can you tell I loved Catcher in the Rye in high school?). In college, I would avoid submitting my art and writing to publications. I thought to myself, I don’t want to make art for anyone other than myself. Why would I need their approval? In the bleakest of moments, I would think the dreaded: no one understands my art. My inner monologue fed my ego, complaining about the state of things.

You get to a certain point where you sigh and stop blaming others and start looking inward. Like Shrek and onions, there’s layers to how I feel, and the closer to the center I went, the closer I got to the truth. At the age of twenty-six (in the past month), I unpacked my fear of publishing. 

At first, I thought it was a fear of failure. That would make sense. Maybe I’m a perfectionist. Yeah, that sounds cool and sophisticated. A shadow of truth. Then I thought, maybe I don’t need an audience. I don’t need to please people. A sliver of truth. Even deeper, maybe I’m afraid of embarrassment. Pretty close. 

The center-of-the-onion truth is that I want people to like and respect me. People-pleasers bother me because I am one. If I make art, I want everyone to love it. My grandma, parents, cousins, friends, coworkers, boss, community, the internet. This is, regrettably, an impossible and self-centered task. It causes me to freeze and be hyper-critical of my work. After all, in my unhealthy states, I’m the one critical of other people’s art. It’s not too much of a stretch to think other people are judging mine. 

I talked to my mother about the Middle School Poem-Sharing Incident recently. I told her I no longer blame that story for my fear of sharing my art and, now, I understand myself better. She responded graciously by telling me her version of a parable. A story of her friend in Israel, learning about how, in Jewish culture, rabbis answered a question with a question. The friend experienced this when she walked into an art gallery, amazed by the paintings, and asked the Jewish artist, “Which is your favorite piece?” The artist responded, “Which is your favorite child?” My mother stopped, smiled, and wondered aloud if creating art is kind of like having children. As in, it hurts most when people don’t appreciate them. She said, “All we need to do is the next right thing. I think it’s time to send your children out into the world.” In the end, I just hope they have some fun. 

As a child, it was easy for me to blame parents and others. I would feel like Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, holding my parent(s) and past accountable for the way I acted. But the scene in Empire that resonates most now is the one where Luke is told by Yoda to go into a dream-like cave. Among the snakes and lizards, Luke fights Darth Vader. The glowing blue and red sabers spark in low frame rate as Luke cuts off phantom Vader’s head. The iconic mask drops and explodes to reveal Luke’s face underneath. I never understood this scene as a kid. Now that I’m older, I’ve realized: while you think you’re resisting others––the truth is––you only have yourself to hold accountable.

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