Oh dear Bard, I know how you feel. But even worse than knowing how it feels to not be creating is the realization that days and weeks go by when I don't even miss it. Sometimes, I look at my life and wonder just how I got here. I don't even look like me in the mirror anymore, let alone on the inside.

I used to be a writer. I didn't just want to be one, I was one. I wrote every day, filling journals and disks and spiral notebooks. I wrote in pencil and in green pen and blue pen and with the keyboard. I wrote poetry, fantasy, romance, essays, memoir, stream-of-consciousness, fanfic and plays. I kept a file on the computer filled with nothing but random lines that didn't fit into anything I was writing, but which would pop into my head, fully formed, and screech at me until I wrote them down.

I'm not sure when I stopped. I could figure it out based on the last things on my hard drive, but the truth is that I had stopped internally long before I stopped trying to go through the motions. I don't know what happened... Law school, my awful job, illnesses, getting married...life.

I talked to a resume coach about a year ago when I decided to reassess my job and my life. She pointed out that the one thing I sounded truly enthusiastic about was the YA novel I had in progress. She was right...but I still couldn't work on it. I open it and the file stays just as it is. There's nothing in me to pour onto the page.

I mourn for what I have lost and wonder if I'll ever get it back. Some days I mourn with tears, and some days I mourn with apathy. I'm not sure which is worse.

I have the same thoughts, it seems. Except mine are more that I used to be constantly drawing all the time. When I was young, nothing made me happier than a pad of cheap newsprint and a blue Bic pen. I drew all kinds of characters and cartoons and even stole construction paper from my Mom to draw on (except I was so proud of the things I had drawn I showed her, and ratted myself out).

All through elementary school, I was the girl who knew how to draw. I'd draw anything the other kids wanted, and earned a place for myself in my class because of my talent. Everyone said I'd be a cartoonist or illustrator, and I thought so, too. In high school I drew political cartoons and spoofs of teachers and the teachers liked them so much they hung them up in their classrooms. The edges of my notebooks were covered with doodles of every kind and it was common for me to have a full blown drawing going on underneath the edge of my regular school notebook.

Somewhere the wind went out of my sails. It started with a cruel art teacher who made fun of my appearance, personality and abilities constantly, driving me to tears. He pinched the faces of the girls in the class and said they were cute. I would personally kick his ass to the curb today, but at the time, I wasn't sure how a teacher (which was normally a class of people I respected) should act, and I figured there was something wrong with myself.

In college, I did a little art, mostly monotypes and a few paintings but it fell away from me and my pencils gathered dust and my paints dried up and I went on to study other things.

For many years I felt like my creative spirit died. I learned how to knit and that helped, but sometimes my heart aches for the girl with her head bent over her pad of paper scribbling away, and just the sheer joy of drawing something you think is good, no matter what others say. It was a voyage of self-discovery...and I miss that aspect of myself but cannot summon the urge to create in that way anymore. I hope it will come back.

My mother still hangs the prints I made in college around her house, and on one hand, it sort of embarresses me, perhaps the way it is painful to read one's own writings or see ones own performances but it is always a reminder of what I could have chosen, instead.

Dear Bard, I feel strangely drawn to respond to your post, although I know next to nothing about you, other than I have read a few of your comments on the forum, and thought you must be very intelligent.

I'm a Pisces (thus, feeling your pain), and 55 years old. I've been around the wheel a round or two more than you, and have learned surprisingly less than I should have, but one thing I have learned (kicking and screaming all the way) is that just when we have absolutely no idea what to do next, it's okay to just stop, do nothing, and be in the moment as calmly as possible.

Something WILL reveal itself, and, when you are in a happier place, you may just look back and think ``Huh! It was the journey that taught me the most.''

My lesson has been to let go of thinking I must be in control of everything, every moment. I'm still learning, BTW. Not as clever as I fancied myself to be, I'm afraid.