Art is the only language that lets me scream in silence.

Art. Dried blood on canvas, smeared like a crime scene. Bones rearranged into verse, cracked open to spill marrow onto the page. I don’t make art to be understood—I make it so I don’t implode. Every brushstroke is a piece of my soul ripped out and hurled against the wall, hoping it sticks, hoping it makes sense to someone, anyone, even if it’s just me. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, I stare at what I’ve made and think: Ah, so that’s what was eating me alive.

But art is also betrayal. It’s the collision between what you want to say and what people hear. It’s the cruel joke of creation: you bleed onto the canvas, and someone sees a pretty pattern. You carve a scream into stone, and someone hangs it in their dining room like a trophy. You write a poem about your heart being ripped out, and someone calls it "quirky". That’s how it works: you offer your guts, your tears, your nightmares, and the world frames them, prices them, sells them back to you as decoration.

I hate art. I love it. I fear it. I need it like I need air, like I need blood, like I need the sharp edge of a knife to remind me I’m still alive.

Painting is like digging a grave with your fingernails and realizing, halfway down, that you’re the corpse. Writing is slitting your wrists and watching the blood turn to ink, the ink turn to poison, the poison turn to the only thing that keeps your heart beating.

And don’t you dare tell me "art saves." Art doesn’t save—it bears witness. It doesn’t heal wounds, but it holds them up to the sun until they look less grotesque, its ugly and raw. My favorite canvas is cracked because I couldn’t stop pounding my fists against it. My best poem has lines torn out because the truth was too heavy to carry.

Art is the act of standing naked in a crowded room and screaming "HERE I AM!" while the crowd murmurs, "So what?"

You spend hours, days, years sculpting demons out of clay, and your mom asks when you’ll get a real job. You write a novel about the hollow ache of loneliness, and a critic talks about "uneven narrative structure". You dance until your feet are raw and bleeding, and someone films it for TikTok with a pop song you’ve always hated.

My art is made of scars disguised like flowers. Your art is a gut punch wrapped in pretty paper. Their art is a scream muffled by layers of irony and self-doubt. It doesn’t matter. All of it is valid. All of it is necessary. All of it is a middle finger to a world that wants us quiet and compliant.

So keep scribbling in your notebooks, even when your hand cramps. Keep singing off-key in the shower, even when your voice breaks. Keep dancing in the kitchen with the dirty dishes piling up, even when your legs give out.

One day, someone will look at your scar-flowers and say: "I bled like that too."

And on that day, even if it lasts just a moment, you’ll have made something sacred. Something real. Something that screams back at the void and says: "I was here. I mattered."

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.