The Eyes Of An Artist

Chapter 19

For the next three months I didn't go back to painting classes. I had started drawing a woman and I was really happy with how the drawing was going. The woman was walking barefoot in a field and she was wearing a dress. When I was drawing the field Ev said to me in a sweet tone,
- You have something with those fields, you're good -. It made me blush a little but I laughed and I think she didn't notice.
I missed that drawing, there was something special to it. Drawing that woman made me feel free.
Beatrice called me a couple times. She told me on the phone that I was good at drawing and that I didn't have to quit.
I used the university as an excuse and tried to get away with that.
Fortunatley during those three months everything went back to normal and I wasn't feeling like I had to hide something. But normal felt so...empty. Their was always something missing, I felt that and it weighed on me.
- Hey Hann, you seem kind of... I don't know, off? - he said to me once while we were having dinner.
- Oh, off? What do you mean by that? - I asked without looking at him.
- Disconnected, sad - he said. He touched my face with tenderness and I looked at him.
- Oh it's probably something hormonal I don't know - I replied.
- Babe... You've been like this the past two months - he said.
I felt like I had been caught and I felt the heat going up to my face.
- Sorry - I said.
- No! Don't be sorry - he said.
- I'm... I... I don't know - I said. He put his arms around me and held me close to his body. I felt his lips on my head and my heart was full of love but something was misssing, something deeper ached and I didn't know how to put that feeling into words.

My parents didn't really talk to me and I didn't talk to them. I felt alone in that period of time, as if the world weighed on me and nobody could see it.
Every day was the repetition of the last day and I just felt so sad. I needed to talk, speaking was breathing to me and there was nobody to talk to about my stuff.

One day, in the middle of class, tears suddenly started leaving marks on the pages that I was writing and I realized that I was crying.
I was able to get to the bathroom without anybody noticing but my heart felt like it had this pain in it, this thing that hurt. And I didn't know how to deal with it anymore.

I started drawing at home all the time. My room was a mess of papers with drawings. I drew abstract things, I tried to give my feelings and emotions shape and colour. It helped, it helped a lot but I still needed to talk and the words were constantly building up inside of my mind, trying to figure a way to get out of my head.
I could feel that Thomas was worried about me and I thought of starting therapy because I really needed a place to talk.

The days were each time longer and longer and nothing moved me, nothing touched me. I felt like I was turning into stone, into this body with no emotion who only lived when drawing. And I blocked all thoughts of Evelyn because I couldn't feel those things, I couldn't! I just couldn't.