Winter is slowly creeping in at the lake. I always liked the lake better in winter because thereās next to no one around. I could sit here all day if I had a heavier jacket. Iāll have to thrift one sometime soon.
Bittersweet adolescence, so fragile and yet so assertive.
The belief that youāll stay young and live forever, yet feeling petrified every time you face the pale light of dawn that you refuse to close your eyes ever again.
Convinced that youāre invincible, above all rules and laws, while cutting people out the moment a possibility of getting hurt emerges.
Not caring what others might think and yet caring way too much.
Rebelling against everything you held true, pretending to embrace the dark and alluring unknown, while you tremble in fear when youāre left on your own.
The tightness you feel in your chest when you notice 5am steadily approaching as you clutch your cheap beer and beg people not to go, please, not yet.
Dragging your doc martens through the asphalt and ripping your tights some more to make it seem intentional.
Befriending alleyways and public restrooms layered thickly in graffiti paint, to the point you canāt even tell what color the walls are supposed to be.
The deafening melancholy squeezing you ever so tightly whenever a chipper bright child walks past that you decide to never face the innocence of your childhood bedroom ever again.
Living off of booze and saying yes to drugs, whispering your intoxicated hopes and dreams into a strangerās lips that taste like cigarettes and Jack Daniels, but itās okay, ācause so does yours.
Rocking the heroin chic and grungy plaid, hanging out in the parking lot with the other lost and hopeless kids. Because thatās what you are - a child playing an adult, assuming knowledge over everything that there is to know, rebelling against the system and living like thereās no tomorrow. Since who knows, there might be none.
Reckless and lost, betrayed and scarred, scared and damaged and yet somehow still so incredibly naive.
What is the word for this intense melancholy and sickening pain you feel when youāre wasting away your youth in a pigsty of a bathroom stall, trails of mascara staining your cheeks, clutching a bottle in one hand and a razor blade in the other, blood trickling down your arm?
When you donāt want to give up yet have no strength to continue, when you want it all to end but do not want to end it, when you want them to care when you no longer do.
When youāre so deep down a hole you dug up yourself that it seems easier to pour down the dirt than to climb out, when youāve been hurt so many times you lost count yet remember every single time you hurt someone else, when youāre living the glorified disaster of an adolescent life that youāve seen on tv, yet you canāt help but to cry when the first cold rays of light signal the dreaded 5am.
Iāve never been good at painting, I donāt recall the last time I whipped out some color because I wanted to and not because I had to for an assignment at school.
And thatās quite sad considering the fact that in elementary school I had written that I wanted to become a āpainterā when I grew up, only to be told that thatās not a legitimate profession, therefore I had to come up with something else.
During my time in high school, I took special art courses in order to prepare for art school entrance exams. I remember hating every second of it, especially the 3 hours in front of an easel causing me anxiety back when I didnāt even know what that word meant.
Our professor wasnāt very helpful, always comparing me to other students asking me why couldnāt I just paint like them? Me, being the logic and math-loving self that I was, would answer his question with even more questions.
āWhat do you mean? Do you mean like the colors? The brush strokes? The amount of paint? What is it???ā
He would simply proclaim me helpless, declaring that my artwork had no soul and that painting was obviously not my strong suit. Whereas I do agree that my art, in fact, had no soul, telling that to a wannabe art student in front of the whole classā¦ slightly questionable. How could my pieces have a soul when every time I picked up a brush I was told otherwise? Constantly compared to others with no actual guidance.
Needless to say, I came to despise everything associated with painting and art in general.
Also, needless to say, I didnāt pass the exams and did not get into art school.
A few years later, during one of the first lectures in my graphic design course, we were asked about the difference between art and design.
āDesign has a purpose whereas art is self-indulgence.ā I piped up feeling like Hermione earning praise.
Yes, thatās it, my art has no soul because Iām not an artist!
āIām not an artist, I donāt make artā became my mantra, no, my excuse, rather.
And so we come back to current times, Iām struggling to reconnect with my inner creativity, trying to wake up the inner artist child who dreamt of becoming a painter and made art because it wasā¦ fun.
Not because it mattered, not because it was assigned, not because it got graded, not because they had to.
For the past 10+ years, art had stopped being fun for me, it was always a competition, that with myself and with those around me.
āThe Artistās Wayā forced me to confront this anxiety attached to painting and art in general.
I was actively avoiding having to reach for my dusty box of acrylics while going through the tasks of week II, but I finally realized that facing these irrational fears was the whole point of going through the course presented by the book in the first place, so why not give it a shot?
I am aware that the piece above looks like a childās finger painting, but you know what? Thatās exactly what it is. My inner artist child playing around with colors just for the sake of having fun, just like they used to ages ago.
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