Sinking

complacency

I finally had a short, sure path.

There was now one week until the gallery at the university, and in the past three days I'd completed three paintings. I was satisfied with this work, and every night and free day I stood in front of an empty or half-finished canvas and I actually thought about what I was doing.

It was only slightly strange; within the past six years I painted mostly when I was dissociating myself from my life, resulting in empty, muddled thoughts that barely helped to aid my brush cover a canvas in colors. It was as if it was automatic, robotic, the way I could disappear and yet become more apparent than I'd ever been at the same time.

It was scary, almost, the way my negative emotions caused this to happen. Of course, lately it was fading away, and more than often I was finding myself happy. It had been difficult, to actually think up ideas and design them and get them done without going into what I used to call my "zone". But I'd found my real zone, in which the ideas exploded from my mind and splattered onto the clean white in front of me, and instead of emptiness I felt complacency.

The project I'd decided on was one nearly perfectly related to the one word I'd written down during Phil and I's walk. I decided to title it 'People'.

The description of the collection was simple. I took features from humans and added emotion and certain color schemes and made it feel like what you were looking at was not a person, but a soul. The time spent with my friends I filled with studying them, studying the way shadows and lines moved across their expressions when laughing, frowning, crying, sleeping, and how within each millisecond of movement something differed.

In my paintings I upped everything by at least one level, having each canvas withhold a new color palette, moving watercolor and acrylic to be right beside each other, not allowing any negative space, mixing intermediate with secondary, and doing everything I could to make these pieces unforgettable to all who saw them. Thinking about it changed everything; it changed the way I looked at my own skill, it changed the way I mixed colors, it changed the way I stroked them onto the white. I took the time to notice how imperfect people really were, painting chapped lips and uneven eyebrows and blemishes on skin, deciding that my art was made purely to show truth.

At this point I didn't really care whether or not I won the scholarship; I enjoyed making these so much and decided that even if I didn't make it into this one university, there were millions of others and some artists didn't even go to school.

At the moment I was staring at the outline of a jaw, trying to decide which emotion I was going to highlight. This thought process, however, was diminished when the door to the bedroom opened. I turned to see my boyfriend looking hesitant, peeking the top of his head into the room and allowing one jacket sleeve covered arm to reach in and touch the wall, most likely for balance.

"Hi, sorry to interrupt," Phil greeted, pushing further in in order to smile at me from where he was behind the door. "But I'm leaving to go to Chris'. He apparently has something important he needs to tell me."

I set down my brush and walked over to him, pulling the door further open. "Anything bad?" I questioned, genuinely worried considering Chris had always been the one related to any of Phil's life issues.

He shook his head. "No, something to do with a relationship," He smirked and I widened my eyes with amusement, wondering how Chris of all people had gotten wrapped up in relationship problems.

"Good luck," I leaned forward and pecked Phil on the lips. "You'll be home in time to eat?"

"Mhmm," He assured, moving to rest his forehead on my shoulder, my arm automatically circling his waist as we embraced in a half-hug. We stood for a few moments although I had a feeling Chris' call had been urgent and Phil didn't want to waste time or be late to him. But the short moments where we were calm and together were cherished, even if they did happen often these days. I think both of us sometimes had memories from the darkness of our pasts return to us, and treasuring the clear moments was something the two of us both needed.