Are You A Self-Isolated Artist?

Photo credit to Gadiel Lazcano on Unsplash.

I went for a period of three years with no close friends in my life. 

And it was awful. 

Whenever my birthday rolled around and my parents asked me who I wanted to have over, I couldn’t think of anyone. Sure, there were the acquaintances I saw here and there, and the kids at church were nice, but I didn’t have anyone who I wanted to invite to a birthday party. 

So, when my birthday rolled around I always ended up feeling sorry for myself. On my thirteenth birthday in particular I was borderline miserable, crying off and on and wishing I had friends in the world. I found this written in my old notebook the day before that birthday;

I prepare to enter teenage-dom, and I cannot say that I have one truly close friend here at home. Will I always have to be so alone? I am weeping inside.

Pretty pathetic, huh?

And why did I have no friends? Why did I cry and feel sorry for myself when my birthday came every May? 

Because I was isolating myself.

I had made myself into a victim. I had made myself into the poor, misunderstood individual nobody wanted to be friends with. But how had I gotten to this place of selfishness? How had I tricked myself into believing this lie?

I had placed my identity in my writing.

I had a list of qualifications someone who called themselves my “friend” needed to have, and I had it all planned out. They needed to be a writer just like me. They needed to love to read, but it would only count if they liked all the same books I did. If they enjoyed things I didn’t, like a different genre of music, or different movies, or worst of all, they liked sports, they couldn’t possibly be my friend. Why? Because someone different than me couldn’t possibly appreciate or understand the things I did. And if they didn’t, they couldn’t appreciate me either, because in my mind I was those things. 

In essence, any real friend needed to be a mini-me. 

Nobody who wasn’t “just like me” could be my friend. 

Pretty disgusting, right? 

The Pattern

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But unfortunately I’m not the only artist who has bought into this twisted narrative. 

A few months after my thirteenth birthday I joined a writing community of around one thousand other teen Christian writers and artists. And I began to see the same pattern I had fought popping up everywhere in the forum spaces.

A lot of the students expressed how they didn’t have friends in their day-to-day life at home. I regularly saw self-pity posts, lamenting the fact that everyone in their lives misunderstood them and their writing. 

One student even went as far as to say that to be a writer is to be forever misunderstood by the world. 

Nobody in the forum corrected her. 

How messed-up is that???

The Answer

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Of course, any form of social media is going to produce people who are feeling sorry for themselves, and I’m not saying that all of those writers weren’t actually misunderstood at different times. People misunderstand and judge each other every day, and I’m sure some of them were facing true negative treatment because of their writing. 

But I do believe that most of them were choosing to misunderstand others. By seeing themselves as the ones misunderstood, by seeing themselves as the people everyone thought were weird, they were cutting off potential relationships with others because the people around them were different from them!

In a nutshell, they were doing to others exactly what they were accusing everyone else of doing to them.

It’s the definition of irony, am I right?

During my period of supposed social exile, I happened to watch a lesson from S.D. Smith, author of the million+ selling Green Ember series. One of his points in the lesson bothered and confused me. It was:

Don’t just hang out with other creative artsy types.

And under the point, he had written, “GROSS”.

What? I thought. Why would he say that? I’ve been looking for years for other creatives to hang out with. How could that be “gross”?

S.D. then went on to explain that his best friend was a woodcutter; someone that wasn’t artsy at all. And while he did say it’s important to have people in your life you can discuss your art and passions with, it’s not a necessity. You need people in your life who are different. People who challenge you to consider other hobbies and activities, people who help you broaden your horizons.

If you don’t have artsy people available in your daily life, that’s okay. Don’t cut off other relational opportunities because of it. God has placed specific people in your life for a special reason. Don’t blind yourself to that.

It took me three long, lonely years to figure out what I was doing wrong; the point I was missing out on. 

For someone to be your friend, they don’t have to care about the things you care about; they just need to care about you.

A good friend is going to care about you and your well-being as a person. A good friend will challenge you and enjoy you. A good friend doesn’t need to be someone who loves to read, write, paint, sing. A good friend needs to be someone who genuinely cares for you. I’m not saying that relationships should be focused on ourselves; I’m making the point that all you need in a friend is for them to value you and for you to enjoy and value them.

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Disclaimer: I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have requirements for our friendships. As a Christian, any close friend I allow to speak into my life must be a follower of Christ. It’s good to have boundaries and rules for the people we allow to become our friends as long as those boundaries aren’t based on petty things like our hobbies and the music and movies we like. 

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What happened to me in my relational dilemma?

Well, let’s just say that none of my close friends in Kansas are writers. Most of them don’t like to read. They prefer Marvel movies to the Lord of the Rings, and all of them play sports. 

As for me?

I still love writing. I still enjoy finding a good book to read. But I’ve also come to love Marvel movies. And I’m getting ready to start my first season of basketball this fall.

Best of all, I have a large, wonderful group of friends who I love hanging out with. They push me in the things that matter; in my faith and relationships. 

I can guarantee that there are amazing people all around you who would love to be your friend.

Have you been isolating yourself? If so, how can you break this cycle and push to befriend the people God has placed in your life?

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