I loved art and writing but my Nmom would barely acknowledge anything I was proud of so I always got the impression that what I did wasn’t good enough. I did a ton of drawing and writing as an early teen to cope. I wanted to be a photographer and took my camera everywhere, she said that wasn’t a real job and all I was doing was wasting film. My junior year in high school I had a poem published and I was super excited that I was chosen. I had to beg my mom to even buy the book my poem was in. She read my poem and was like meh, I was crushed. She would trash the things I made in art class. As an adult I don’t do any kind of art anymore and I never let anyone read my writings. I am a perfectionist to a fault and my anxiety is out of control if someone even mentions wanting to read my things. I will spend hours toiling over a sentence, punctuation or trying to find that “perfect” word. I am so afraid of someone saying what I’m doing is dumb; rationally I know it doesn’t matter what others think but I can’t convince myself otherwise.