When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. But what happens when life throws a bucket of paint at your face?

The sable hairs tickle my skin as the water rushes through, rinsing out the soap. One at a time, until my hands are numb from the running liquid, I wash my utensils, hanging them from a piece of scotch tape upside down. This is, in my opinion, one of the best parts of this business. Not the molding or the changing, but the cleaning up afterwards. Because I know that I am done. The only thing better is setting up, because you know you have only begun.
My story originates when I was twelve years old. Sixth grade was the year that I had the most trouble with. All my friends found new ones, while I was left sitting alone at the lunch tables. Boys testosterone levels increased and girls started sharing their feelings blankly every four weeks, something no one was prepared for. I was the girl who no one noticed, no one cared about- but I wasn’t complaining. During recess, I read books or played hopscotch alone. I pretended to do homework, so no one would bother me or stay in the library, where I was an equal- no one could talk to me, and I didn’t have to talk to them. But I wasn’t happy. I was blue- plain and primary. I had one layer, and even that was thin.
When I hit seventh grade, I knew that I would start my new life. I had been hospitalized for a month over the summer before due to a volleyball accident that left me paralyzed from my neck to my toes. While lying down in that colorful hospital bed for weeks and not being able to do anything but breathe, I had some time to think about what I had made of my life. It made me realize how much how much I needed to change my point of view. I needed to change my way of life. Change is good. Change is the only way that we can survive because we, as humans, can only endure the same thing for so long. I was a fish out of water, if you will. Looking for more life, when death was approaching. So, like mixing yellow and blue, I became green.
I had changed. As part of my therapy in the hospital, I drew. And, to my surprise, it was good. I was given a box of oil pastels and a DVD set of The Karate Kid. I would hit pause when Ralph Macchio was in his finest during the crane kick and was almost able to replicate it exactly. When I got home from my visit, I had changed into a different person, not because of my drawing in particular, but because of the way it felt to draw it. When you are outlining a picture or sketching an object, there is a connection of feeling with the piece, emotionally and physically. Yes, I did have a crush on Ralph, but that is beside the point. With neck brace in place, I went on my first outing to Wal-Mart and bought my paint supplies.
When I got home, the first thing I noticed when I tore off the plastic covering was the smell of the stretched canvas. The unfamiliar smell reached the end of my nostrils and my brain had decided that it was pleased. It smelled of processed plaster; if one has ever worked with paper Mache, sort of like that. Yet, it was better. Paper Mache is other’s stories that an artist sculpts to make it into your own, but a canvas is something that starts off new, fresh, and blank. It’s up to me to decide what to put on it. It’s up to me to decide what to form it into. Paint is flat, and yes, so is the canvas, but it is more efficient to make a two dimensional object into three, than vise versa.
I splattered on the paint in a triangle in colors of a brilliant blue, a bright yellow, and crimson and started to mix. My paintbrush drove through the first color, red, and carried its color across the canvas, all the way to the yellow, and blended in to create orange. With my brush still driving, the orange blended back into yellow, which hit the blue, creating green until it transferred back to the original color, blue. I carried that blue until I had reached my first destination, which then mixed together to create a purple. I had made a triangle of colors that stills hangs in my room today.
After I was finished, I started to wash off the brushes. It takes a while for them to be completely clean, but that time with the running water carrying newly changed pastel colors into the sink makes me wonder. It gives me time to worry and stress and then to let it all go. I have to be gentle with the brush, or else it will ruin. Kind of like how you have to be gentle with life so that you can spend as much time with it as you can.
That afternoon, and still to this day, I paint. I paint until I run out of canvas or space on my wall. Someone once said, “Art is the stored honey of the human soul”. Painting makes me happy and it clears my mind of everything, so my mind can start unsullied. And then I take out my white paint and cover what I had once done to start something new because life isn’t always about the show, rather, more the experience through the layers.
My mom is always pestering me about signing my name and dating it, but I refuse to do so. I refuse to do this because I don’t want it to be finished. I don’t want the painting to be over and as soon as you put those curved letters in place, you can polish it. I don’t put a date on my work because it isn’t about the time stamp. As long as life, happiness can live, why try to put an end to it?
On that old summer day, I had finally screwed on the last paint tube and put it in a box with my old papers from fifth grade, stacked to the top with A pluses and stickers, I barely had enough room to fit the small amount of material I had. I shoved it back into by dust bunny collector and took a deep breath in and sighed.
I hung my new painting up on my wall with a rusty nail that we had painted over when we remodeled my room, took a big step back and took it all in. and then came the tears. My tears were not of sadness, nor of joy, but of complete and total comprehension. Everything that I had been through hit me all at once. My past life, full of memories of bruising and crying, my present life, the stage where you are trying to change, but you aren’t sure what you want to morph into, and my future- a world open to whatever life has to throw at me- weather a pillow or a bucket of paint. I fell to my knees and sobbed until I was sure that it was over. That the tears would no longer fall. That the tears would never again cloud my eyes. That the tears would no longer ruin my paint. I couldn’t cry tears of unsure anymore because my canvas was no longer blank.