Tortured Artist

So I've been thinking about being an artist. A friend of mine thinks that we are all tortured souls. We either fight these battles or slip into the scenery (whatever the case) somehow it's torture. Are we just crocodiles that cry in order to keep our eyes moist amidst all of the chemicals used in our various mediums while all the while everyone thinks we are tortured?

I've come to question it all these days. I suppose I was very tortured when I was young. My passsion was so strong and my family so weak. My iq was high and my artistic vision was deep. But I never had an identity. I was the "girl next door who was a great artist and as going to attend Harvard" in those days. That's the identity that was given to me. When my family fell apart (literally) and I fell in love with a boy who eventually got another girl pregnant, I started wondering what I truly was.

I did what any tortured artist would do and I started searching my soul..... I started *experiencing* things in order to know who I really was. I lost my virginity. I quit school to see if education really mattered only to find out 15 years later what it meant to me...only could I see the true value after working my ass off to get it back. I tried drugs and did not like them. I pierced myself when piercing wasn't cool, had a mohawk when mohawks weren't cool. I tried finding love, but instead found sex. I didn't excel at Harvard, but I was the best damn bartender you've ever met. Adventure was my heroin. I moved to LA on the fly, then moved back home on the fly. I traveled to every continent except one. I started companies and started more. I became a philosopher, a friend, a mother, a lover, and an advocate. Believe me this doesn't leave much time to be artistic. I did anything to not face that art was part of me. But eventually you figure out there's just some things you can't change. To be happy, you just have to love it

So now that I've come full circle, who am I? I suppose I can be for people what they want me to be, but for me....

I'm an artist


tortured or not, it doesn't matter

Is there anything else I could have been?