Someone once introduced me as an amazingly talented artist and their friend to their parent. Their parent then asked me actual things about art and how I got into it. It was my favorite conversation, someone in a short amount of time got to know me and my interests without me feeling judged or awkward. I felt so confident and in my element, I remember talking to my friend's dad for an hour, he insisted on buying me a drink and sat and listened. I remember thinking that support and love must feel like this.
My mom one time cried at the decision my father had made to not co-sign student loans. She said she was sorry and that I deserved more. I was bitter. I had just put a non-refundable deposit on housing. $750 dollars was just gone now because I trusted something someone had told me. I had put in my notice at work, my things were packed. I even had a $15,000 artistic scholarship per year. And poof, like that it was gone.
I was so tired, I told my mom it was ok, that I would figure it out. I felt so dry and empty. I remember everything felt like plastic around me. Nothing felt real anymore. I stayed in my room for three days straight. I painted a really beautiful painting of myself and this tree wrapping it's limbs around me. I looked frozen in the painting, my eyes were void. when I finished I decided there was something missing. So I painted a purple bird, that was supposed to represent my soul, with a key nestled in the clutch of it's beak, making its way towards my body.
Point of this is that even in a dark hour of my life I wasn't ready to give up. Even in my frustration and sadness there was hope. Hope, Faith, whatever you would like to call it, is so powerful that it can pull and push you out of the darkest circumstances. You just can't give up, and you can't let go.
I really want to have more conversations like the one I had with my friend's dad, and I hold on to this hope that I will. Meeting me shouldn't be about meeting what happened to me. It should be about meeting the girl who mistakes cardboard cut-outs for real people far too often. It should be about the girl who's read almost every classic piece of english literature, about the girl who wants to travel, who wants to inspire. It should be about meeting me, my favorite things and traditions. Meeting me should be about feeling loved because I'm dying to meet you too.