Artgirl

15// heal

As many as I'd like to sleep at the moment. God, if I could really sleep. For at least five minutes. Ten seconds, even. It would be a sweet escape from this bullshit. And I wouldn't have to think.

I am here, now. And there is a party to attend.

Smile, sit still, look pretty, I thought, entering the celebration hall. My mom was dancing, looking like a queen in her dress. She stopped once she saw me and I noticed the look of fear when my bandaged hand came into sight.

"I'm okay. It's just a little broken bone. I'm fine, it's okay. Don't worry about me," I told everyone who asked. I tucked myself in a little corner of the hall, with a glass of wine and nothing on my mind.

Julia danced and danced, she enjoyed being passed along from one person to the other. She knew all the words to the songs and made sure that everyone knew that she did. She giggled jubilantly, and I couldn't help but smile.

I was her, once upon a time. Before there was not much to worry about. I was in love with the world and everything it had to offer. But as I grew up, I discovered that the world could offer you absolute shit.

Fuck, I was so in love with the world.

I used to think that paint was the blood in my veins, the one I could control. It was the thing I had the most power over. In fact, when everything seemed to be going wrong, I could enter a peace of mind. Paint was like sleeping. Everything that didn't matter was gone, but it still hung at the back of my mind. I could create stories, tell-tale lives, be whoever I wanted to be in that canvas. I could draw myself, draw those I loved, but I could also draw faces of people I'd never met and places I'd never see, from a small memory. I drew people and wondered if one day, someone would recognize themselves in one of my paintings.

Even when I was a kid, paint was my best friend. Until Lucy and Diana came along. I'd splotch paint around and try endlessly to recreate an object. Upon failure, I'd just dip my hand in the can of paint, put it all over the messed up canvas and call it my own art. My art never judged me, it never looked down upon me, and it never doubted its love for me.

Until now. Until the moments when I realized that my art had the possibility to leave me without preparation, without any buildup. If my art left me, I'd be a kid again. I'd be holding onto nothing at all.

Skye came at the table, a thin layer of sweat on her forehead from the dancing. That, of course, didn't stop her from shining with beauty. Everything about her was full of youth and love; she was truly someone to look up to. Especially when she said things like: "You wanna ditch this place and go get some milkshakes?"

"I'm good, thanks," I smiled. "How's the dance floor?"

"Boring without you. I can actually dance, so I'm breaking the white-girls-can't-dance stereotype. You need to dance to reinforce it."

"That was genuinely rude."

"I genuinely don't care. I do care about you, though. What did the doctor say?"

"Nothing. It's a little break."

She huffed and swallowed the rest of my wine glass. I really did want to punch her, in that very moment. "Cut the crap. What happened?"

"Nothing, Skye. It's a little break. I'm fine."

"You're bullshitting me now, eh? Just because we don't live together doesn't mean I don't know you."

I poured more wine into my glass and took a careful sip with my good hand before answering. "I never said that. I'm saying that I'm fine, but you're disagreeing. Do you want me to tell you: I'm miserable and I want to crawl into a hole and hibernate in it forever?"