The Death of the Artist II/III

I was consumed by the pressure to perform, to produce something that always lives up to expectations. The creative market often leaves no room for kindness. It’s rare to find empathy in a space where we’re treated as tools, not as people. Making money by selling a piece of who we are is a violent process, one that slowly eats away at us. You don’t notice it right away, but you disappear little by little.

For a long time, I thought my inner artist had taken their own life. That they had given up, crushed under the weight of expectations. But as I revisited the reasons that led to this breaking point, I realized something I’d never considered before: they didn’t take their own life. They were killed.

I spent so much time searching for someone to blame that I blinded myself to the hardest truth. The culprit wasn’t the market, the clients, or external expectations. Unfortunately, the guilty party was always here, staring back at me in the mirror. I was the one who pulled the trigger.