Strangeness in Reflections

I am not sure what to think of myself anymore. Today I opened up my portfolio, full of the past and my life as an artist. Or rather, the time when I thought of myself as this. I suppose I still do think of myself as this, at least when I am feeling wishful. I haven't created something that reflected back at me for nearly 4 years. It seems everything I have made as of late have been silly things that I don't take seriously and thus remain continuous and I unfulfilled.

I wonder if it is just me that has resulted in this out come, or if many of my peers have ended up the same. I think of the people I respected as artists and I can't tell if they are the same as I or if they are still trying. My whole human life before art school was filled with forming my identity as an artist, and in my life after art school I have become fearful of being so. Maybe it was how I broke into pieces, maybe I just lost that piece when I was reassembling myself. Maybe I am just so scared of falling back into those pieces. When I think back on me making anything all I can recall is that gnawing feeling at the pit of my heart, that feeling that turns roaring as you work on something. It's that need to get what is inside of you out so you can see it more clearly, but that thing inside of you just gets caught somewhere at the back of your throat, just tickling the beginnings of your tongue, just stuck there. I have never completed a single piece, I have always stopped right before its end. Everything I have made is just suspended in time by fear. Most of who I am is the same.

I still feel the need to make, to turn myself inside out. Maybe that is what an artist is. I really don't know. I know a part of me has died, or maybe is just sleeping. I know that without that part I can't be certain of what is real and what isn't. I know I am more alone because of this part being dormant. I know that I am in no way less of myself because of it, but I am often mistaken in thinking this is not me at all.