Breaking Free of the "Tortured Artist" Archetype

The season of joy

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give into it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins."

- Mary Oliver

The Tortured Artist

“You know you can learn just as much from joy as you do from suffering,” my mother said to me. I was laying on the floor of my apartment, and had just read her my most recent poem. She reads everything. The unpolished manuscript, the fragmented poem, the imperfect story. I once heard that unconditional love wears the face of the person you would let read your diary, and know you wouldn’t be judged for it. It’s rare to find a best friend in a mother, and it took us years to get here, but I find her honesty is my greatest sounding board.

I do my best to ignore feedback from people on the internet. Whether they think I am a legend or an obnoxious Instagram poet, both of those opinions are filed away in the same compartment. When she gives me feedback, I take it in with every pore in my body. I have a small group of friends and family who know me to my core—people who can hold me accountable to my values and challenge me. So, when my mother essentially said, “Hey, buds. Don’t confuse pain with depth,” I laughed at myself.

“Let everything happen to you

Beauty and terror

Just keep going

No feeling is final”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

As writers, it is our job to experience as much as possible. As poets, it is our job to feel those experiences as deeply as possible. Deep doesn’t mean heavy. I can feel deeply and still walk lightly. I have never seen a tree that takes itself seriously, or a bird, or a fish. Nothing in nature is this introspective, carrying the weight of all that hasn’t gone “right,” in life.

It makes me sad to think of the example we artists often set, that we have to claw our way tooth and nail out of hell to have something to say.

Life will bring us enough challenges. We don’t have to go looking for a sword to fall on just to feel something, or have material for our work. If joy and ease and peace are presented to you—seize them.

After the roughest few years of my life, I came out swinging with a book that was essentially a graveyard for all that I had survived. I found that the rarest stars come out in the darkest of nights, but then I began to fear dawn breaking and the sun shining on my face once again.

Joy felt fragile. I would later learn from EMDR therapy that this was a trauma response. That waiting for the other shoe to drop feeling is not, in fact, normal. I remember falling in love two years ago. That fear of: will I find my person? Was replaced with: will I lose my person? I said to my therapist, “What if I have to go through all of it again?” My therapist smiled at me and said, “Seize the season that you are in, dear. Refusing to lean into your joy will not protect you from heartbreak.”

No matter what season you are in, lean in. Some seasons, your art may feel like the only safe haven in the world. You may need to feel heard, you may need to let the words transform and heal you. Other seasons, you can make an offering. You can provide more of what this world desperately needs more of: hope.

Exclusive excerpt from my love poem to joy:

I am ready to write about joy and love

The way I write about heartbreak and loss. 

Because ironically,

Happiness feels far more fragile

Like it might slip through my fingertips

And leave me in devastation,

but isn’t that the definition of courage?

to risk living with your whole heart,

knowing it will break,

to be born knowing you’ll die,

to cradle each moment knowing it will pass

isn’t that what makes us uniquely human?

This deal we struck with with time. 

All that life asks of us 

Is to love as fiercely as we can,

And when it’s time to let go,

That we let go,

With a well-worn body full of

Bittersweet and precious memories.

Thanks for reading. If you managed to make it this far, congratulations: your attention span is larger than a walnut.

Your friendly neighborhood scribe,

Allie