A Single Stroke ✔️

39: Silhouette

Every night, I couldn't help but reminisce and think and feel too much. I hardly ever slept at night because my thoughts consumed me. They created noise only I could hear and I couldn't escape from it. Sometimes I covered my head with my pillow. Sometimes I blared my Beats as high as the volume would go. But darkness contaminated my mind.

I missed mom. I missed Azaleah. I missed painting. I was alone. No one could understand. Even if I told them everything, they'd never understand. They couldn't get inside my head. They'd never know or see or hear or feel the pain spreading throughout my body. I was trapped inside myself and couldn't break free. The cast on my hand didn't help the feeling.

My mind was a storm, my world had shattered, and my heart contained the shards of glass.

For once, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't catch my breath. I wanted to punch something. Someone. I needed to calm down. I was losing control of my life.

The feelings ripped me apart inside. I was empty, but I wanted to feel something. Anything.

Inhale. Exhale.

One day after school I went straight to the park. I curled up against a tree where origami dangled from and stayed for a while, resting my head on my backpack. The thought of all those secrets surrounding me made me feel not so alone. Other people had words and feelings trapped inside them too. I was like folded origami. I wanted someone to unfold me and erase all the painful words in my body.

When I decided to leave the park, I didn't go home.

I wandered around the streets until it was dark. Until I didn't know whether it was late at night or early morning. The pain in my chest was suffocating. How the hell was I supposed to get rid of the feelings inside me? The darkness poisoning me from the inside out?

I stopped outside the Late Café. The windows were dark. They were closed which meant it was past midnight. The doors were locked.

I walked around the building to the back wall connected to an alley. Only one flickering lamp lit the way and illuminated the back of the café. The brick wall was dingy and smeared with dirt.

I set my backpack down. The weight of it made a loud thud! as it hit the ground. I rummaged around until I found my blue and black spray paint.

My cans of spray paint were the only remaining "paints" Allen didn't touch. I had them stored in my closet because I didn't use them as much as I used my other paints. But I wanted to get rid of them. Painting was over for me. I had to get rid of any art that still remained. Any piece of me that remained. Since I was too sentimental to just throw them away, I decided I'd use up the cans until they were completely empty.

Ha. Like me.

On my phone, I started playing 'Shadows' by Red to get my adrenaline pumping. I didn't want my beats in the way, so I let the music roar through my phone speakers in the dead of night. Someone passing by might've heard. I sort of wanted them to. Maybe I'd go to prison for vandalism. Way better than my current prison.

With a black bandana over my nose and mouth, I started outlining my silhouette against the wall.

I used black first since that was the color of my shadow, but then I sprayed over that with blue. Cobalt. It was the same can I used when I spray painted the bathroom walls last year.

The lyrics blared into the night: "There's a hate inside of me like some kind of master... I tried to save you but I can't find the answer..."

The black wasn't dry when I'd started spraying over in blue, so it bled through. Both colors dripped down the wall and mixed.

Fun fact: if you mixed blue and black paint, you got gray.

With my good hand I smeared the droplets into each other so the colors mixed. Some blue and black showed distinctly in a few places, but you had to really be looking for it to see.

More lyrics: "I need you with me as I enter the shadows."

When I finished, I used white spray paint to write out, "Everything is GRAY." But since it was with my left hand, the words smudged even more and added more gray to the painting.

A small part of me still searched for the high painting always gave me. The excitement, energy, pride and accomplishment that came after I finished any piece of art. I wanted to see if that at least still remained.

But there was...nothing. I felt absolutely nothing. The darkness inside me contaminated my heart and it must've stopped working.

* * *

I felt myself slipping away.

If I didn't have paint to console me, what did I have? If I'd lost everything already, what else was there to lose?

Spray-painting might not have been exactly what I needed. An actual paintbrush and a canvas might have helped me set my mind back on track. Returning to that tedious task of taking a brush and focusing so hard on the painting rather than your own thoughts and feelings might have helped me reset. Maybe it would alleviate the pain in my soul.

Earlier that morning, I bought a canvas with the last of my summer savings. Maybe it was a stupid thing to waste my savings on, but I was desperate. Money stopped mattering. When it came to saving yourself, money didn't mean a thing.

Back at home, I took out the canvas and a single paintbrush.

But because I had only one good hand, I couldn't open the small tin of paint I also bought. And I couldn't move the canvas the way I wanted to or hold the paintbrush the way I wanted to. I struggled with everything until I ended up cutting my good hand on the canvas itself.

And the blood splattered onto the canvas.

I had always been so clumsy. It was that same clumsiness that put my hand in a cast.

I wiped my bleeding hand on a paper towel stained with blue and black paint. (Earlier I tried wiping the spray paint off, but my fingers were stained.)

It was true: I wasn't meant to paint anymore. I couldn't. Even if I did, it wouldn't have made me feel any better. It wasn't my life that was broken, it was me. I. Was. Broken.

I picked up the canvas and snapped it in half across my knee. Tossed the two halves to the side, adding them to the broken pile in the center of my room.

If I was broken, I would always feel broken.

But what if I let myself go? I'd remove myself from the broken Emery. Maybe I wouldn't feel broken anymore if I completely left myself behind and became someone new.

I had to let myself go. There was no other option. The idea frightened me; I didn't really want to let myself go...at least not all of me...

...but maybe that was the only way I could be free.