the girl named winter

| prologue |

DO YOU KNOW that feeling when everything is just trapped inside of you, and there are no words you can string together and tie with a ribbon on top and offer to the world, so instead you're left with trembling hands holding a paintbrush, quivering colourless lips, a closing throat, and a huge weight to carry on your shoulders?

Because that's how it was for me before.

There's always a havoc in my head, with a thunderstorm bringing its crashing waves along the shores of my sanity, and there's this black hole in the middle my sky, eating all of my stars until I'm left as one with the darkness.

I'm left with my brushes and pencils.

I desperately try to express these silent screams into a vivid landscape full of randomness and bright blinding colors, because that's how you fight your way through the dark at night: you franticly find the spark somewhere inside of you.

For years, I've sketched faces and drew the same faces and portrayed the faces in a monochromatic world pasted on a withering sketchpad that lived longer than my mother. For years, I've tried to keep up with the hardships of life; I've wrestled with life through and from hell; I've defeated monsters I didn't knew I would face, and I'd sacrifice a lot of effort to keep myself from drowning on the quicksand people walk upon.

I've done so much in the past years. There are countless of memories plastered on my bedroom wall, in my diary, in my sketchpad: a lot of faces, of secrets, of tears, of movie tickets, of burgers and French fries, of proms, of winning, of losing, of loving, of living.

There's nothing wrong, really, but something isn't right.

There will always be a moment in your life where you know you have everything you need, but there will always be something that's missing. Maybe a small fragment of your innocence, or a piece of friendly attention, or the sweet smell of freedom, maybe even a strand of loneliness for a while –

Or, perhaps, a person who will accept you.

I didn't know how much I needed someone to be there for me since the day I met Rey. There were my sketches, then there were my sketches with him in (the sketches I made that I was most proud of, the sketches I treasured the most). There were drawings, and then there were colours. There were pencils furiously tap-dancing across a blank page held by a frustrated artist, and then there were tints of red and blues and yellows and more reds exploding in the sky of a bare canvas, creating a universe that would never cease to exist. There were memories, then there were kisses, and hugs, and dates, and more kissing. There was anxiousness and worry, and then there was self-confidence and love (a lot of love actually). There was a sunset, and then there was the sun bleeding red for the moon as two lovers sat in front of the sea, the spaces between them overpoweringly away.

There was my life, and then there was my life with him in it.

Of course, it lasted faster than it started. Stuff occurred, people changed, and our bodies refused to work in synch. We weren't as one anymore, and then there were screaming, throwing, cursing, blaming, and, finally, ending.

He left me with the colours he created, smiling back at me with their hues, with the skin he caressed in the dark, with the lips he always kissed, with the hand he always held, and with the heart that he once took care of.

There was only drawings, a lot of sunsets, paintbrushes refusing to obey their owner, screaming at the moon, a lot of haunting memories, and more sunsets without him.

He was never to blame, and I was never to blame either, because heaven and earth, and earth and heaven, will never collide.

So maybe I wasn't his puzzle piece, and he wasn't mine. I'm not the girl he'll sweep off the aisle, and his surname isn't going to be mine, but the emotions, the laughter, the pain, and everything else suffocating me will take eons to go away.

Once again, I was back to square one: to finding that missing piece, to fill that emptiness, to search for the puzzle piece.

That's where I get to meet Blue, and Blue gets to meet me, and we get to look up at the same sky with hope, knowing that the missing fragment is somewhere in this small world, breathing the same oxygen.

This is the story of Winter and Blue, of Blue and Winter.