You're starting to freak out. I know.

You watch the "other" Majors walk to their classes, practicality misting off of them like hot breath in sharp, frigid winter mornings. You see it all too clearly. There's a line between you and them, a tattoo on your soul that marks you an artist. You can't erase it. You've tried.

You see your generation becoming engineers, surgeons, lawyers, anything that doesn't involve a canvas, a camera, or a plot chart. See them becoming what you aren't.

Why do your fingers prefer a paintbrush over a scalpel or the pages of a book to the buttons of a calculator? If you could rewrite your DNA, sketch it over, you just might. It would save you the heartache and the not knowing if you'll survive on less than a six-figure salary.

The "others" don't have to worry about that little monster inside of them, the one that grips and demands to be recognized, let out, acknowledged.

Sometimes it hurts.

So you go to your paintbrushes. Your screens. Your books. Your clay.

Put the earbuds in.

Tune the guitar.

Pick up the pen.

And you create the pain away.

Here is what I have found worked best in the moments where band-aids couldn't fix my bruises, when I wanted an exorcism of the artist inside me: let it burn.

The salt they pour in your wounds? Rub it in.

The names they call you? Write them in permanent marker.

The scars they keep prying open? Let them bleed.

We creatives know that pain really does make the best art.

And art is what we are called to make.