Lighter hues.
It feels strange to suddenly have this urge to create again.
To play with words. To write random musings. To put brushes on a blank canvas.
For so long, my best (maybe even my only) reason to create has been the heavy things in life:
Stress.
Anxiety.
Depression.
I used to joke, “I only write when I’m drunk. When I’m lonely, when I’m weak, when I’m in the dark. That’s when I write. I write it all. And when I’m sober, I edit.”
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Drawing never felt like mine. I loved colors, but pictures never carried me the way words did. Then, a few years ago, I tried painting. Brushes, paints, canvas. They felt foreign. Cold. Not like the warm, familiar pages of my journals at fourteen. A blank white canvas stared back at me, daring me.
And so I thought, “How do I get over this fear of blankness? Of not knowing where to start when navigating a new territory?”
Then I realized, maybe I could bring something familiar, something I know by heart, into this world and create from there.
So I painted. But only when I felt blue.
Blue moods. Darkest hues. Always that same palette.
And that only pulled me deeper. It opened a new level of depression. The words that once described emptiness and yearning I didn’t even know I felt began to take on faces of their own through my brushes, shadows pressed against the black canvas.
I was stuck there. Lived there for what felt like forever.
Until today. Today feels different. Today feels like something is shifting.
Strange, but warm.
Foreign, but safe.
Unfamiliar, but welcoming.
This urge to create comes from a happy place I didn’t even know was still inside me. Or maybe one I buried, believing I’d never need it again.
A new kind of voice.
Still true.
Just… lighter.
