428. Nameless Suffering

She knew this was going to happen. She knew that sharing her art would come with an emotional cost. She knew that her feelings would be mostly negative, regardless of the reception her work received. Even if she was praised, she knew that she was going to feel bad.

She anticipated her feelings perfectly, but this hasn’t helped. It hasn’t limited or reduced the intensity of the emotion. She feels exactly as terrible as she thought she would. At least it’s over, she tells herself. At least she did this courageous thing. At least they didn’t completely hate her work.

These consolations don’t make her feel better. She almost wishes the others had hated her work, for then she would be overcome with a blistering rage that would annihilate this other feeling — whatever it is. To call it dissatisfaction seems too hollow. To call it depression seems too extreme. To call it grief seems absurd.

She has no name for her feeling and she cannot invent one. She just feels bad. It’s like a hole has opened up inside her and she can’t stop looking at it. The hole began to form at the precise moment when the others began to look at her work.

No, this isn’t quite right, she realizes. What happened is that she started looking at her work differently once the others were looking at it. She began to see the possible ways they might see it, and then she couldn’t stop herself from noticing its flaws. Her work fell short in many ways and it was far from perfect.

Her feeling might just be embarrassment. Perhaps she is embarrassed at having shown work so unrefined. At the same time, her work was no less refined than any of the other work that was shown. Embarrassment doesn’t seem to be the right name either.

She feels frustrated at the fact that she cannot grasp her feeling. So frustrated that frustration seems to have taken its place. She can’t even see it anymore. She is more upset with herself for feeling bad than anything else. And what is the point of that? She decides that she needs to go home, eat, and finally get some sleep.