The White Canvas

The silence. The drought. The slipping of passion between the very tips of my fingernails.

It was sickening.

All the colors were dull to her, a mixture of all grays and browns, a monochromatic scale with horrifying blacks on both ends. She lays in her bed every single night, finding the silver in the swirls of black and blue. It was a never-ending dilemma.

Three years. For three long years her days have been a series of monotones, a static line either waiting to jump out or be cut off. Her once prismatic world now reduced to a desperate figment of survival.

Her fingers went limp at the sight of her palettes and empty canvasses, stretched pieces of clothing longing for a touch of its own artist, webbed cans of paint plastered beneath its easel’s rungs. Her treasured materials were aching as much as she was aching to feel them.

I…I just can’t. She thought.

But even as her mind clouded with dimwitted thoughts, she found herself staring at the empty white in front of her. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the white stretched canvas reeked a significant contrast among the dreary hues that took over her life ever since her brother’s death three years ago.

Her eyes were bloodshot red from crying, as she did so every night. Her classmates took no notice of her during the day, and they were probably thinking that she was into narcotics. No one knew better.

She shut herself off from everyone. She left her cruel home in the suburbs and raised herself enough to live off a minimum-wage salary, just enough for her essentials and rent. She struggled to survive, but even so, she trained herself to live on bare necessities, occasionally using her artistic talents to take hold of commissioned jobs.

She was no slouch to painting. Eve was never an outcast on her previous identity, one who was always well-liked and well-respected. She got straight As, even with joining lots of different clubs and outside-the-campus competitions. She was fierce, bold, and passionate. She was a living embodiment of her own name—Eve—like a euphoric period of nighttime full of stars, just before a beautiful occasion comes through. She was a prodigy, her hands were always in harmony with the very tips of her paintbrushes and all colors took joy under her command. She was a living form of her works of art; beautiful, deep, and full of life.

But that Eve was no more.

Sitting on the edge of her rusty twin sized bed, she smiled weakly, remembering the prime of her life before tragedy struck inside her used-to-be safe haven, ripping out every single entity that Eve was once known as. Her eyes traveled again to the stretched canvas just a few meters away from her, untouched and unnoticed. She glanced at her decaying walls, some rectangular spots brighter than the others, where her most beautiful artworks were used to be displayed. Eventually, she had to clear it off, selling what’s left of her pieces to pay her bills. The walls were empty, except for one single portrait of her brother that she couldn’t bear to dispose or sell.

She had dark bags of circles under her eyes, a tangible proof that she was feeling dead inside. She was drowning in debt, and she only ate once earlier today. She had no one. She had nothing.

Except for her possessions. And even with those, she couldn’t find enough strength to relive her passion.

I need to end this. This is not worth it. I am not worth it.

She stood up, her shaking body rhythmically with her feeble feet. She dragged herself to her nearest dresser, and rummaged through.

Scissors, yes. Or razor—anything.

She grasped her shears triumphantly and went back to the edge of her bed, still shaking and sweating. Her heart was beating louder and faster, like a cruel taunting that’s slithering into her thoughts, or an alarm of horror of what’s about to come.

Her eyes were brimming with tears, as she took on one last glance around her room.

Her brother’s portrait was staring at her, as if mockingly saying “Are you seriously doing that?” which was exactly what he would say if he was alive. But the portrait’s lips never moved. Yet her brother’s eyes were boring into her own.

Don’t you dare mock me. You’re dead.

Yes, I am dead. But you’re not. And you don’t need to be.

I am definitely going crazy. Eve thought. She was having a silly banter with her dead brother, even as she was on the verge of taking away her own life.

You are indeed crazy. Taking your own life with a pair of scissors? Come on, you can do better than that!

She found herself laughing.

It was a terrifying sound, not because her laugh was horrendous, but because after three long years of submerging herself into the depths of sorrow and melancholia over the death of her brother, here she was, going bonkers and having an imaginary conversation with him.

She set aside her shears, and shook her head as if to say, How silly.

She took a deep breath and stared at her brother’s portrait again, as if daring him to speak.

“You’re right,” she said, her voice was hoarse. “I can do better than that.”

This time, she stood in front of the blank white canvas yet again. She did not know what to do nor what to expect but she grabbed her palette and cans of paint. The presence of colors still feel foreign to her, she was used to living off dull shades, literally and metaphorically, over the past few years that she had a hard time associating herself with the freshest green or the mellowest yellow.

But there was one exception.

She was now seeing red.

She grabbed her once favorite paintbrush, now splotched with an array of colors in its handle, and dipped its hairs on to a shade of crimson.

Her chest heaved with coarse breaths.

She didn’t know if she still had the talent, but her hands kept working. She made a handful of strokes, a mixture of black, gray, brown and now red. She didn’t feel the need to use the brightest colors—all she knew is that she was making something that depicted her years of sorrow, years of drowning, painting a picture of her battle within. Every once in a while, she would glance at her brother, sometimes even imagining that he was smiling down on her.

She was not okay, the mere feeling of that feels strange in her heart and she knows it would take time, a hell lot of time, for her to fully heal.

But for now, she’s back.

Oh yeah. I’m definitely going to do better than this.

And for the first time in three years, her hands and paintbrush were once again merged into one.