I didn’t grow up with instruments. Or studios. Or the idea that creativity was something you could pursue seriously. I grew up in Eastern Europe, in a small apartment with peeling paint and books borrowed from the library.

My mother raised me and my older brother on her own—our father left before I ever met him. All I know about him is what my mother told me: he was good with his hands: calligraphy, drawing, and woodburning. 

And I guess, somehow, I got that creativity from him, too. Also from my mother, who appears to have no creative bone in her, and yet she tells some stories with the power of conjuring images and feelings and build up worlds with nothing but spoken words.

We Had Nothing—But We Had Imagination.

We didn’t have toys, not really. But we had stories. Our favorite game was called “let’s pretend.” We didn’t know it at the time, but we were playing role-playing games—with our words, our voices, and the fierce worldbuilding that only two children who have nothing but each other can create.

That instinct—to imagine, to tell stories, to build entire lives in silence—never left me.

First, it came out in drawings. The halls of my school were covered in my watercolors.

Then came poetry. A teacher once referred me to a local publisher. I was so proud—until I realized the man behind the “opportunity” was just another predator hiding behind polite words. I learned something important then: in this world, talent is never enough. Especially if you’re a girl. Especially if you’re poor. Especially if you refuse to play someone else’s game.

So I Chose Survival.

I knew I wouldn’t make it as an artist—not without connections, not without money, and not without selling pieces of myself I wasn’t willing to give.

So I did what many of us do: I chose learning.

University. Master’s. A career that could pay the bills and help my aging mother—the woman who worked 40 years as a seamstress without ever compromising her values, even when there was nothing in the fridge and bills piling up.

I didn’t want to starve as an artist, because I already had as a kid.

I remember going to the flea market as a twelve-year-old to sell things from our home just to make it to my mother’s next salary. That kind of memory doesn’t fade—it etches itself into your bones.

But it didn’t kill my imagination. It only made me more determined...

My First Computer Was a Portal.

I didn’t get a computer until university. We couldn’t afford one before that. But when I finally did, it was like someone handed me a key to a locked room inside my chest.

I made flipbook animations with paper and pen before I ever had a mouse. Then Paint. Then Windows Movie Maker—slow, glitchy, but magic. I dabbled in sound, in images, in every medium that would have me.

Not because I wanted to be famous, but because I couldn’t stop imagining.

I didn’t call myself an artist.

But I never stopped being one.

And Now I Use AI—And I’m Told That Makes Me Fake?

Today, I finally have access to tools I only dreamed of growing up. I can write the stories in my head and score them. I can build worlds where words and music and images intertwine.

I can give voice to a saga I’ve carried in silence for years—stories like Moonborn and the Galatean Saga, where sound is emotion, and emotion is survival.

And now that I can make music, really make it... I'm told it doesn't count because I used AI.

As if anyone who’s never seen the years I spent reaching for creation has the right to tell me what I am.

And because I use tools like Suno or ElevenLabs or Midjourney or Kling to build what I couldn't afford to create any other way—I’m told I’m not a “real” artist?

By people who didn’t see the market stalls.

Didn’t see the paper sketches.

Didn’t see the girl who was told not to bother learning guitar because the family couldn’t afford one.

Didn’t see the poems that never got published because a man wanted something in return.

Didn’t see me learning, experimenting, failing, trying again—for years—just for the joy of it.

That judgment hurts.

But I won’t let it stop me.

Because these stories inside me—they’re mine.

And no one gets to take them away.

For Anyone Who’s Felt the Same

If you’ve been dismissed, laughed at, talked over—

If you’ve been told that AI tools are “cheating,” or that your voice isn’t real because it’s carried by new technology—

I want you to know this:

You are not fake.

You are not less.

You are not late.

You are not alone.

You’re a creator.

And the way you create doesn’t need to fit someone else’s mold.

It just needs to be yours.

I’m Still Here. Still Making. Still Imagining.

I may not have started with much.

But I have this now:

A voice. A story. A universe.

And the tools to finally bring it to life.

AI didn’t hand me a shortcut.

It handed me back a dream I thought I’d never reach.

So no, I’m not here to argue about whether it’s “real.”

I’m just here to create.

And if you're the same—welcome.

Keep building. Keep dreaming.

We’re the real ones.

The quiet ones.

The ones who never stopped imagining.

I Wasn’t Supposed to Be an Artist. But I Never Stopped Creating.