Mirage

I've decided I'm going to draw again. Many years ago I quit because I couldn't draw as well as I desperately wanted to. I had drawn for a while and carried a portfolio, mostly stills in pencil, and would show it to people as a conversation piece. Some time ago I was at a convention for fantasy/sci-fi novelists and met an author there who also drew. She was only 15 and could draw circles around me...effortlessly. I lost all confidence and gave up.

Watching the fandom fade, seeing some of the fractured and walled-off members here and former friends drift and hide in the shadows, the lack of new inspiring art, the lack of enthusiasm...it all breaks my heart. I need to communicate. The muses that whisper between my thoughts and actions are calling ever more strongly, despite knowing my efforts will probably not mean anything.

While I'm aware that I'm a terrible and tragic person, and weak at making and keeping friends - know that my story in life is also tragic and horrible. MLP FiM gave me something I needed - beauty and joy. I lost them so long ago...and the show brought color back into my dark life. And so I wanted to be with other fans - first to understand what was going on with me (why was I liking this show so much?) and perhaps, to make friends.

There is nothing more valuable in life than love. Love is kind. Love accepts. Love forgives. Love tolerates. Love is strength. Love is truth. We know love because we understand it to be greater than any thought we are ever able to think of to describe it...Love is the only, truly, real thing. And while I may be able to form words about it, I know so little, and I act apart from it much too often. I thought I had found it, and hoped it would repair me...but it was complicated, like everything else.

I came back because I was asked to. But what I found was largely, more of the same. Sure, I'm busy, and I really can't afford to spend much time here, but that's not the real reason why I stayed away. No one ever stays away because they're 'busy'. The better answer is 'they have better things to do'. When you are hurt deeply, everything around seems to die. Suddenly, even the people you love don't matter that much as the black hole inside consumes your life and energy. All of the dominoes fall...all of the glass falls off the shelves. Nothing ever fits together again, and healing seems totally impossible.

But you come back. Like a cycle of dying and rising again, you're different but the same. The mind can forget, but the heart always knows...even a new life has its scars. Is there anything that can make sense of suffering? Or perhaps, we should only become breath so our bodies never feel again. And what could such a ghost know...and what does he mean...and what does she do...and what can it hope for?

So my proposal is - give me something to draw, and I'll draw it. It won't be good, but it will be from me to you.