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“Hello.
It’s been a while.
I’ve missed you.”
This is what I’d say to my muse if I had the courage to reach out. Sometimes keeping in touch with my creativity gets away from me, and before I know it, it’s been so long that I feel awkward just trying to make a connection out of the blue.
What if it’s busy? I don’t want to be a distraction. What if it has moved on to some other author who lavishes it with attention? What if it hates me for neglecting it? What if it’s gone? Gone…forever?
It would serve me right for treating my inspiration that way. Always pushing it to the side, expecting it to be true while receiving no loyalty in return, callously allowing it to wither in the darkness. I couldn’t blame it for turning its back on me, seeking comfort with another. The fault is entirely my own.
But what if it hasn’t left? Would my muse welcome me back? Would it even speak to me after I treated it so?
I have to know. I can wait no longer. I close my eyes, breathe in deeply, lightly run my fingertips along the keys…
…and we connect.
Relief washes over me and ideas spring to life as we chat like old friends over coffee. No judgement. No admonishments. Only a warm embrace and a bouyant hope that we will never again be so long without one another.
It is only now that I realize that, without me, my muse does not exist. For what is inspiration without someone to inspire? However, without creativity, a part of me is missing, like a flash of lighting without thunder rumbling in its wake. I’m incomplete. Empty. Unfulfilled.
I don’t wish to feel that way again. I said I missed my muse, but that statement doesn’t capture the ache of knowing something isn’t quite right but not being able to put your finger on it. The tightness in your chest when you’ve lost something–something important–but what it is remains elusive. The drudgery of dragging yourself through days, weeks, sometimes months of mind-numbingly ordinary activities with a piece of yourself absent.
I reach out and grasp my muse by the hand. No more will I be alone on this journey. We are one once again. And together, we will dream, tell stories, and create.
Reach out to your muse. Find that piece of your soul that makes you feel alive and once you do, don’t ever let it go. Live, love, dream, create. Trust me, you won’t regret it.