My relationship with creativity has never been easy or straightforward. I suspect this applies to most creative people. Mine mostly falters on the grounds of impropriety. It doesn’t seem right, somehow, for me to create things. It feels absurd — I, feel absurd.

A man once tried to teach me to play guitar, a man I loved at the time, and I was good at the fingering if you’ll pardon my saying so. Note after note and chord after chord I found my way to the shapes of sound so easily it surprised us both. Ah but then, then it was time to play a song. Strumming — that’s where I fell down with this particular art. I just couldn’t do it. I would dissolve in fits of laughter as he looked on helplessly, confused. “Look at me!” I shrieked at him. “Look at me! Playing a guitar.”

I like to sing but I won’t do it if you’re listening. I like to draw pictures but I don’t hang them on my walls. I take photographs but I never frame them. I write, but only in places where nobody will see. It’s not something I’ve ever particularly felt the need to remedy. What would be the purpose in that? I don’t make my living from these things I love, so what is the harm in loving them in secret? I can be as silly as I like when there’s nobody there to laugh.

It is tempting to locate the source of my fear in ego. Nobody likes to make something and have it poorly received. Maybe I don’t share my work because I am afraid that it’s not good. But the thing is, the thing that is the hardest part to say, is that I do think it’s good. I like the words I write. I like the sound of my voice in song. I like the way the world looks in those shuttered moments that I snatch to keep. My problem is not so much that I fear I can’t do these things, but that my bones tell me I shouldn’t.

I’m tired, frankly. I like creating things and I am tired of fighting it. I want to learn and grow and we can’t do that in the dark. And it’s time, I have decided that it’s time, to stop laughing at myself. You can still laugh at me, if you like. I don’t mind that at all. And I don’t mind if you prefer the shapes of other words, because none of this is for you. I hope that’s ok.

I am excited to imagine a future in which I take my joy seriously and if that future ever comes, if that is a destination I ever am to reach, it will have begun here. I am making room in my life for the creativity that is in my heart.

Hi, my name is Caroline Patricia Neill and I take photographs, I write poems and stories, and I will hang them on these walls.