The Trouble with Dreams (non-fiction)

I wouldn’t recommend killing your dreams.

Most kids are afraid of growing up and having their dreams die.  That kind of death is the most common one – the slow suffocation under the weight of reality, or the gradual atrophy as you get distracted and stop feeding the poor things.  There’s the other common cause of death – you try, and you fail.
My death was similar to this.
I failed.
And failed.  And failed.  And failed.  And failed.  I kept failing.  Nothing was ever a success.  I was worthless.  My artwork was worthless.  My stories were incomplete.  My comics were pathetic.
But I couldn’t turn off the desire to create.  Art was part of me.  It was everything I wanted to say, all I wanted to show, the little splash of individuality and tiny little change in the rhythm and din of the world.
But I couldn’t show it.  I couldn’t say it.
It was literally driving me mad.
I couldn’t keep living that way.
So I killed my dreams.
I re-discovered television.  If I wanted to try to draw again, I wouldn’t let myself.  If I wanted to write, I did not open Microsoft Word.  I was still reading, but it sparked my imagination too much.
I drowned myself in television.
Eventually, I found the fire to create had been damped.  I didn’t really want to create anything.
And god, I hated it.  The inactivity was murdering me far more cruelly than wrestling with the Demon Art ever did.
I started doodling of pieces of scrap paper before I threw them away.
I drew a little bit, but I was still afraid.
I started reading books again, voraciously.
Then I joined Flash Fiction Month.

I wouldn’t recommend killing your dreams.
They’ll just haunt you.
Then you have to go through the trouble of resurrecting the damn things.