The bond of friendship holds a stronger force on my creativity for me than most. Friendship, that bond of trust, mutual connection, thou it may not belove, is strong enough to lift any darkness if you only let it.
I did not have any true friends until around the sixth grade. Not ones that would voluntarily hang out with me. Today, I have a very faint recollection of before that time. I can only remember that most of the time I was hanging around two girls that let me tag along more than anything else.
Before that time with my parents, the way they were, I felt like running away all the time. That and suicide. I feel like it was a reasonable thought to have as a kid. In hindsight, I’m surprised I had made it past the sixth grade. I think that having that taste of friendship was what saved me the first time.
You see when you are constantly being told you are stupid from parents that are supposed to love you and being physically punished all the time till you sometimes bleed with no friends and add the threat that if I tried to get adopted that they would never get to see me again is a really cruel and dark place to live in as a child. Having a friend change that. It means that you aren’t alone.
That feeling of being alone is how I became so creative. I tried to claw the way out of the darkness. Having a friend, well, that was being shown the light. It was something that you couldn’t obtain with putting your mind to it or hard work. It is about having someone accept you as yourself. It is knowing who you are, knowing what people love about you. Friendships open that way to knowing you. After all, how can you create what you were meant to bring into being without knowing thyself? To know yourself is to know the way. Knowing others opens the doors.
