You think sometimes that perhaps you are a wellspring run dry. That all that was once energetic and hopeful and entertaining about you bubbled up out of the shallowest of sources some many seasons ago, and you have been sucking the last drops from dry ground for years.
There was a time, of course, when you felt as if you flamed with abundance. So much life and vitality, so much hope and determination that you felt certain the font of creativity within you would always overflow.
But that was before you understood how thirsty the world could be. How greedy. How there were some who would come to your waters and guzzle and guzzle as if they alone wished to be the one to drain you dry. How even as they were bloated with you they would, instead of thanking you for slaking their thirst, complain of your terrible taste, your subpar offering.
How even as they bemoaned your uselessness, your inferiority, they lowered devouring mouths to take from you again. When they came up empty, they cursed you and demanded that you find some way to give them more.
More of your lifeblood to pour into the insatiable void that is their unthinking thirst. More of your dreams, so carefully spun and crafted into confections of delight to be consumed in a moment without pause to savor.
They demanded that you give them more because they were empty. When you could not, when you refused, they left you a dry husk upon the ground and you bid them good riddance. As you curled into a ball around the festering wound they had left, you swore then and there that you would never slake another’s thirst.
And yet time passed, and you found you were no longer dry ground. You remembered that calling inside you, what your creativity was far. So you created again, and because you loved what you had made, you offered it to the world.
And there were those who drank and appreciated what you had given, who offered little tokens of gratitude and praise that made you feel alive, if still not as thriving as before. But once you again grew bright enough to shine, the guzzlers returned, shoving out the others and draining you down to the dregs before casting you aside once more and moving on.
So here you lie barren and wasted. Furious that what was offered was taken beyond reason. But you will fill up again. More slowly, this time, and not as much as before, but there will come a day when you will realize that you are no longer salted ground.
And when that time comes you will create something new, something that you love, and the cycle will repeat, and each time it does you will find yourself a little slower to recover. Until you realize that if you keep trying, one day you will not recover. Because you can never create enough to fill an endless void.
So you are left with a choice. Either you develop the means by which to drive away the ravenous—through spite and wretchedness and unpalatability—or you close yourself off, so that your creativity becomes only for yourself and those trusted few, the ones who always gave back to you what they could. Who did not demand you sacrifice yourself further as you lay in your sickbed, but wished instead that you might recover, and assured you they would be here when you were ready.
You think, sometimes, that perhaps you are a wellspring run dry. But you know it is not true. You are merely a stolen one.