Painted Gold

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E P I G R A P H:
"We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin."
—André Berthiaume

Happiness was always something within my reach. It was something deeply embedded into my life, from the homemade meals I ate to the beloved paintings of mine that hung on walls in various galleries around the world. Happiness wove itself in through the little things: the flowers from the love of my life, the songs that played softly in the background as the first few strokes of paint touched another blank canvas.

Happiness wasn't just in the things around me, but me myself. I was happy, and there was no doubt about it.

I was born into the Becket family, a place where I was the youngest amongst my three other siblings. We were a happy bunch, an outcome that definitely had something to do with the fact that we were filthy rich. There was never a time in those five toddler years where I was left unattended, whether it be my parents watching me, one or all my older brothers, or a professional nanny. I lived a coddled, spoiled life where the bad in the world couldn't even touch me.

At the age of five I had been enrolled into a prestigious private school, one where the wealthiest of the wealthy chose to attend. In a class of about ten kids, all of whom had been taught about common etiquette long before schooling started, I was guaranteed full attention whenever I needed it, a feat. that I would have never been blessed with if I had gone to public school.

Life was an easy breeze, an effortless one that brought with it no shortcomings or bouts of sadness, and in my naïvety I had lived all nineteen years of it to the fullest.

By fourteen I was considered a full fledged prodigy, both in the academic and artistic world. My knack for art had been discovered early on, around fifth grade or so, and had developed into a skill that had been quickly cultivated by my supporting parents who had immediately hired a painting instructor.

It was through my artistic talents that I met the love of my life.

William Hastings was a boy two years my senior, an aspiring entrepreneur who was already guaranteed a few million just by right of birth. Our first meeting occurred at another first for me, my first ever art showing that his parents had dragged him along to. Coincidentally, it was my art, my amateurish, messy, scraggly art, that he had taken a liking to most, and one thing lead to another until suddenly there I was; fifteen and dating one of the most soon-to-be successful men in existence.

Our relationship had been as easy as the rest of my life, the two of us rarely arguing over detrimental things as we were both too busy becoming the best versions of ourselves. He inherited his family's company as I graduated from high school at a measly age of sixteen, the private schooling system having accelerated my education into prodigal standards. We were both successful in our own way, geniuses by some people's definition, and still too young to fully understand where our lives were headed, but we were happy.

We were so damn happy.

I had just turned nineteen when it happened.

At that age I was what many would strive for and fail to reach in their thirties, or even forties; an elated woman engaged to a loving fiancé who carried his own weight just as I carried mine. I had been living the American dream as the beloved fiancée of now multi-millionaire William Hastings. I was a successful artist whose works were splayed across numerous galleries around the world, and that in it of itself was something to marvel at. The thing I was most proud of, however, came in the form of a letter; my artwork's admittance into the Lazarides Gallery in London, one earned without my parent's money.

I had everything.

I was adored by the tabloids; the intelligent Barbie doll that was engaged to an equally intellectual Ken doll. Even as more of an attraction to America and less of my own person, I was still unbelievably satisfied with my life.

I was so happy. I was so, so happy.

And that's why I can't figure out, for the life of me, why I threw myself off the Golden Gate Bridge.