Good Girl Gone Bad

24 | Tails It Is Then.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Tails It Is Then.

Listen To: High Hopes by Kodaline.

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I wonder what it would be like to paint again.

To brush wide, crazy strokes of saphires and violets and emeralds on an empty sheet.

To cover a canvas with gorgeous hues and create a story. A fairytale without words. To create art. Beauty.

I missed it. I missed the feeling of a paintbrush in my hand and the process of creating glorious new colors from others. I missed using my imagination and hands to create eye catching portraits.

I missed how painting used to steady me. Anchor me. How it used to be my safe haven. The world could have been against me and I would have been fine with a paintbrush in one hand and a canvas in the other.

I didn't paint anymore.

I stopped painting when Ella died.

Because when the world took her from me, I didn't think it deserved any more beauty. Any more art.

It took away the most beautiful person in my life. I took away the beauty I created, in return.

But that didn't mean I didn't miss it.

I used to have a portrait of my paintings on my bedroom wall, bunched together like a collage of memories in wild hues.

I don't have them there anymore.

I remember coming back home after Ella died. Walking back into a room that still looked the same. A world that still looked the same. It should have stopped. The earth should have stopped spinning. After all, Ella was gone. What was the use anymore?

But it kept spinning.

It.
Kept.
Spinning.

And I hated it for that.

The first few days I'd been numb. Emotionless. Empty.

The anger had hit a few weeks later. It came in waves upon waves of fury and misery and guilt.

One day I'd walked into my room to the same messy blankets and paint streaked desk and my bed decorated in that blue quilt Ella had loved and I'd just snapped.

I'd trashed my whole room. Shattered every picture. Thrown my paints against the wall.

And then I'd ripped down my paintings. One at a time. Each piece of art ripped in half and crumpled and discarded. A mess of paint streaked pieces of paper all over the floor. Shattered pieces, each holding a piece of my soul in them. All of them showing how broken I was. They told my story then. A story of someone with so much pain it was eating her up from the inside. I felt the tiniest bit at peace as I surveyed the damage of my room. Because it finally showed the ugly in the world.

When mom and Asher came home later that day and saw my room trashed, they said nothing.

They said nothing.

They just cleaned up the mess quietly as I watched them from my bed with hollow eyes; arms wrapped around my knees as I fell back into that emotionless void I'd been in for ages. As that tiny bit of steadily brewing anger dissolved back into numbness.

My mother handled her husband and daughter's death differently. She became organized. She became someone else. A robot. Hardworking. Organized. Professional.

She dove headstraight into her work and stayed as far from the house as long as she could. After all, why not run from the ghosts of your past rather than face them.