Secondsidenote:#hashtag— also useless.
But you try explaining the term“searchable content” to anyone not carrying a millennial card. And yet I alwaysgot stuck with outdated clients that refused to grow their business with the“pound sign.”
I gnawed on my bottom lip while Imoved my glass and cell phone to my office. Well, office-ishspace. I’d intended to set up the second bedroom with a desk, bookshelves, andif I was feeling frisky, a fern. Instead, I kept my laptop on my coffee table,my work odds and ends in a drawer in the kitchen and my books in waist-highstacks next to my bed.
In this room I’d covered the floorwith old sheets and propped an easel perpendicular to the windows. The smallwalk-in closet was filled with canvases of every size—some fresh, some finished,a few were somewhere in between.
I had moved a folding table in herethat I’d snagged at a garage sale in my parents’ neighborhood. I’d covered itin another sheet and used it to organize my paints, brushes and other odds andends. The adjoining bathroom had been turned into a drying room—more cleanedbrushes were laid out on every available surface.
Vera called it my studio. But forme, it felt more like a guilty pleasure. An embarrassing hobby that sometimescured boredom, sometimes became an outlet for frustration and disappointment,and sometimes was more important to me than breathing.
But it wasn’t anything more thanthat. Once upon a time, I’d had an adolescent dream of becoming a world-famouspainter, spending my days hovering over canvas, wielding a paintbrush and mysoul as inspiration. But that was before I’d come to terms with necessary evilslike bill-paying, car-owning, and meal-planning. I was a real grown-up now witha real, grown-up job. A job that I sometimes even liked. The wholestarving-artist thing just wasn’t practical.
I’d indulged my creative sidethroughout high school, and then done what most other artists did aftergraduation. I found a job in a loosely creative field and walked away from allof the other impractical daydreams that wouldn’t offer stability or consistentpaychecks or a 401k.
But on days like today, when I wasreminded of how bad adulthood tasted and how desperately I wished I could runback to my younger years when I didn’t have to pay bills or live alone orwonder what men like Ezra Baptiste were really thinking, I quietly escaped tothis sacred place and poured out all of these irrational, conflicting thoughtsonto stark, white, glorious canvas. In essence, I stopped thinking altogether.
My landlord had tried to sell me ona roommate when I first moved in, but the thought of dealing with anotherperson day in and day out sounded exhausting. And when I’d leased this place,Vera had still been in Charlotte. She was the only human I could imaginesharing a living space with for longer than three days.
But now she had Killian for that.
Their relationship was another currentevent that turned funny in my gut. I was so happy for my friend. Like beyondhappy. Like maxed out with happiness. Vera deserved every single second ofbliss and marriage and happily ever after. She had been through absolute hellwith Derrek, and Killian was so perfect for her in every way. They were #relationshipgoalsto the extreme.See that proper use of a hashtag? Suck it Green City Mowing.
So why did I feel left behind?
I pulled a hair tie off my wrist andpiled my long mane of nearly black hair onto the top of my head. Fiddling withmy bangs until they were out of my way, I stripped out of work clothes andthrew on the over-sized t-shirt a past boyfriend from college had neverclaimed. Not that I’d offered to give it back.
There were zero lingering feelingsfor Brady… Brady… Brady-something. But his high school football t-shirt waslarge and super comfortable and something I was unwilling to part with.
I went about preparing my paints andsetting up a fresh canvas on the easel, replacing the latest portrait I’d beenworking on. I had been in the middle of a winter sunset. Pinks, oranges, anddeep purples streaked across a sky filled with thin gray clouds. The sun was anorange globe over a downtown Durham dusted with layers of white snow that hadnever actually fallen this year. Windows glowed in yellow light and the streetsbelow were… still a work in progress.
I had plans to finish the piece,adding people and vehicles and all the little details I loved about my city. Myfingers itched to deepen the sun, blur the edges and streak the pastels withricher color. But I didn’t have a sunset in me tonight. It was cold outside,but there was no snow and my thoughts were wild and disorganized and I didn’twant to paint something beautiful.
I needed raw and vulnerable andconfused.
I needed to unleash these erraticemotions and turn them into something I could see, fix, and then abandon.
My fingers trembled as I picked upmy brush, so I gripped it harder, digging the end of it into my palm. Sittingdown on the very edge of my stool, I gave up fighting internal battles andturned them over to the canvas. It was more than cathartic. It was healing andthinking and soothing all at the same time.
I threw myself into the art ofcreating something without even having a fully conceptualized idea of what Iwas going to paint. I just let the day press in on me, crushing me beneath theweight of everything I was so unsure about until it came oozing out my fingers,spilling onto the canvas in purposeful brush strokes and arcs of color.
When I was forced to sit up straightagain to give my aching neck and shoulders a break, I realized two and a halfhours had passed. With the creative spell broken, I stared hard at my work,startled as if seeing it for the very first time.
Angular lines made a strong, stoicjaw. Full lips pressed into a frown. There was a sharp slash of a nose. Twochocolate eyes stared back from beneath determined brows. His hair was pushedback, unkempt in a way he would never really allow. It matched his loose tieand the perplexed scowl he wore—figments of my imagination, characteristics I’dgiven him in this fictional version that he’d never tolerate in real life.
Staring at my handiwork, I saw thatI hadn’t really captured Ezra at all though. My lines were too hard. My colorsnot exactly right. His eyes were too shallow. His jawline… his cheekbones… his definededges were too hard and too wrong, and I hated that I hadn’t done them justice.That I’d failed. And I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I was missingsomething.
This wasn’t Ezra. This was veryclearly a picture of someone trying to paint Ezra.
I slumped on my stool, rolling mystiff neck back and forth. “Ugh, why am I even trying with you?” I asked thecanvas. I stared at the eyes that weren’t Ezra’s at all. “I still don’t likeyou.”
My phone buzzed in the other room,so I left Ezra to go grab it. It turned out I had four missed texts, but thisone was the first I’d heard. All from Vera.
7:03:Are you a famous rock star yet?
7:48:Are you at least the famous graphic designer for rock stars yet?
8:56:Does the silent treatment mean bad news? Want me to go down to your office andraise hell? Whose ass do I need to kick?
