Catharsis

“What do you want to keep drawing for?” my father would bark in his gruff and slightly nasal voice, “Real men don't draw. We're going to get you into Football, or Basketball. If you don't want to play sports, we're gonna get you into something physically active. When I was your age, I would….” He would continue. I would usually zone out at this point, staring at him with this vague disinterest that stoked the flames of his emasculating rage. To him, boys should only be drawn to sports, cars, and women. My artistic interests flew in the face of everything he stood for, and it soon became my escape in those formative years. Those words he barked at me are still knocking around inside my head, and they come to me at the worst times.

Finding peace from my artistic endeavors came a bit later in life. I never thought of art as a therapeutic outlet, let alone knowing what that was. I saw it mainly as an activity I enjoyed immensely. My first "mature" creation was not inspired by happiness but rather an intense outpouring of emotions I had kept long bottled up. It was only after this exorcism that positivity followed.

It began with an interest in childish sketches of apocalyptic scenes—My early pieces were mainly the R.M.S. Titanic during her final plunge, especially during the split, with stages of improvement as I continued to draw this scene. What began as an interpretative sketch reminiscent of a hot dog quickly evolved into an entire ship complete with rivets, funnels, windows, and even the ship's name on the hull. The satisfaction such detailed drawings brought me was overwhelming at a young age. I would consistently continue to create things like this for my pleasure, as well as receiving the compliments of others around me—it became a way to fluff my young artistic ego, to spite my father, and give joy to others.

High school would bring a new variety of artistic media to choose from, and it was like a world unexplored to me, especially in the heat of my boiling emotions and hormones. The school had everything from performing arts, music, acrylic painting, watercolors, colored pencils, photography, and video editing, all of which I would dabble in with varying depth of interest.

When adult life began after graduation, I was hitting the ground running to make ends meet and losing my artistic side soon after. I started my career working as a nurse’s aide in a long-term care facility. Several months into my employment, I became aware of my father’s sudden decline in health. After suffering from a stroke while I was in high school and making an impressive turnaround, he soon found himself assailed by another sickness; congestive heart failure. Which ultimately proved to be the symbolic nail in the coffin. He received the news that he had “only three months at the longest,” So he set his affairs in order with Mom and I after we brought him home on hospice and died several days after that prognosis.

I received news that I was hired at the big-shot hospital. While I was glad mom and I could share in this celebration, I was still sad that dad could not. Once I started working for the corporate hospital, things seemed like they were going to get better, and I thought I had finally made it. For five years, it was a perplexing mix of uphill and downhill experiences that ran side by side—the good and the bad batting me around with equal strength. One day, after the years of endless call lights, linen changes, vital signs, and death, I found myself at a crossroads; Do I quit and find another career? Or do I continue as I am and pull up my big boy pants? There was decent money to be made as a nurse’s aide in the hospital. The path I had chosen had quickly burnt my candle at both ends, and the need for money kept me tied to this choice as the world became more expensive around me. I was stuck, and that felt further exacerbated after my father passed away.

I ended up spending a ludicrous amount of money on several canvases, acrylic paints, and a brush set, which sat on my bedroom floor for nearly four months before I was ready to dive into them. On one random afternoon, after waking up from sleeping most of the day, it felt like the right time to finally do something with them. I set up everything and plopped down on the edge of my bed, my eyes fixated on the small textures of the canvas’s surface. For the first time in several years, I had picked up something artistic, and the loss for what to paint was perceptively never-ending. I sat there in silence for what felt like several hours, staring blankly at the white canvas in front of me, my eyes occasionally crossing as the radio silence in my mind grew louder. I was almost ready to give up when the week-long struggle hit a nerve, and a wave of feelings rushed over me.

The emotions that came to me sparked the creation of my first painting, and they were feelings of unadulterated misery; fueled by exhaustion after years of giving myself until I had nothing left, and suppressed grief so black it leeched its fetid grasp beyond just myself—it permeated the environment around me like a malignant mold. While my brush passed along the white canvas, the heavy blackness inside my mind poured out, tainting its once white surface until it reflected the void within. I finally broke down in front of this canvas—which was a life jacket in this tremendous black sea that swallowed me. All of the self-loathing for my emotional state and body image came roaring to the forefront. I started to see the tired, broken caricature of myself staring back at me in the canvas—the utter shame and disgust for myself apparent in my sunken, empty eyes; self-esteem shattered with every waking moment after I caught my reflection in the mirror.

The skin I had painted was dead-pale, stretched taught against a waifish frame, reminiscent of my colorless world at the time. I was content to blend into the surroundings until I eventually faded away. My inner armor was torn open, baring my heart to the world where an unrelenting storm battered it with mountainous waves stretching high over my head and plummeting down on top of me each time I resurfaced. I had achieved my desire to fade away, to drown, but with it, I brought my inner decay. The constant exhaustion bleached my hair to gray. One grief joining with another grief; All of it bleeding out from my soul, down my arms, and through my fingers until it reached the tip of my paintbrush.

After the tears ended, the surging black sea had calmed, and I felt serenity. Before me, on the easel, sat the completed painting. I stared at it for a moment, and a shudder passed through me. It was sickening in its glory. I felt I had just made the vilest entry into a journal, and I had to live with the words I had written. Exhausted, I put my dirtied palette on the floor along with the caked paintbrush and went straight to bed. The following morning brought with it a new clarity that I haven’t felt in a long time; I had faced a hidden beast the night before, and it was the worst side of myself that required me to come to terms. The painting was the outlet through which this confrontation came, and I could no longer pretend that it wasn’t there.

I walked away from this first experience with a newfound appreciation for art. It was a reconnection on a whole new level, and I had many things in my mind after that. A charcuterie board of ideas, some of the ideas were basic, others worked on a deeper level. I began to map them out in my mind, and several have come to fruition in various forms.

Now, the painting sits in my closet, and I am content to have closed a seemingly endless chapter of my emotional journey, which I look back on from time to time as a reminder to keep fighting. More color has come to each canvas afterward, and I felt my love of life renewed. While I still wade the everyday struggles, I find my connection to artistic outlets stronger than before. I do not have a single one that I prefer over the other. All I know is that I need to create in any medium my heart sees fit. One day it’s a video, another day a poem, and sometimes it's a monologue from a play. Artistic outlets are critical to me, as they help me convey the incomprehensible depths that words may fail to capture.

Today, I am sitting beside another canvas, a new painting partially completed, and joy in my heart. All that remains is for me to complete it. It is a contrasted image with a plethora of colorful detail, and a face that has yet to be crafted. Hopefully, soon, I can find the inspiration to continue, but for now, it rests and waits for the opportune time.