Bleeding Ink

If you asked me to describe what it means to be human, I’d describe it as this. Crisp white pages soon to be covered in colors too beautiful to describe. A black cover covered in doodled white lines and stickers that describe the artist's innermost thoughts. A black spine that holds it, and me, together. It comforts me when no living being can. The book itself is not heavy, and yet when I write in it it’s as if I’m Atlas, the king of the sky, and my burden has been lifted from my shoulders. Freely does it allow me to vent and cry, the very rawest of my human emotions spilling out on it’s blank pages. My sketchbook isn’t living, and yet it’s become one of the things I rely on most. I rely on my sketchbook because my sketchbook allows me to be human without judgment. It holds my soul within it’s pages, it soothes it, heals it. It embraces me like an old, long lost friend. Inside my sketchbook, I am warm, I am safe, I am allowed to cry.

I found my sketchbook online, unknowingly picking that one out because I thought the book looked nice. I hadn’t known then what my sketchbook would mean to me. I do now. I don’t believe in fate or chance, but something led me to buy that sketchbook.I don’t know what force it was, but, whatever it was - thank you. Thank you for allowing me to heal. Thank you for allowing me to grow. Thank you for allowing me to be human.

Rounded corners, straight lines, a body that pieces it all together. It doesn’t have any particularly wonderful shape, but it’s body is one that provides me with comfort. It’s dog-eared pages and creased lines are more familiar to me than the back of my own hand. Within it’s heartfelt pages lie worlds built from experience and emotion. On one page might lie a story birthed from pain, and on another might lie on a story built on dreams. These different journeys lead to different worlds, and if we might traverse down their worn paths we may discover things better left hidden.

Like you.

You should’ve been left in the shadows.

You know who you are, don’t you? The man who created me. The man who broke me. The man who left me to bleed out on the once crisp pages of my sketchbook. I’ve always wondered if you regret it. If you regret the way you hurt me, the things you did. Knowing you, you probably don’t. You don’t have the room to care, right? You consider yourself a king, and all I am to you is a lowly peasant at your feet.

I want to forgive you, I do. I want to think that you love me, that you care for me. I wish you did, I wish you could’ve been the father I’ve always dreamed of having.

We both know that won’t happen, and so I’ll continue to bleed on these pages until there’s nothing left of me.

If you turn the page, you’ll see a drawing of two girls. One girl is cloaked under a veil of inky water, waves crashing over her head as her hand reaches towards the starlight. She is dark, cold, she is all things bleak in the world. Despair crashes through her, and those she touches are infected with it. Another girl is bathed in light. She is beautiful, she is powerful, she is all things good in the world. Starlight runs in her veins, and her soul is golden. The two girls reach towards each other, but they will never be able to touch. In a world filled with despair, they’re reaching towards each other in an act of desperation. Happiness can not exist without sadness, and I thought I could not exist without you. In the end though, the day was never meant to love the night, I was never really meant to love you.

Another page turn, another look into my memories. This page isn’t beautiful, it is not happy and filled with light. This is the type of sadness that bleeds ink, and tonight I am completely tattooed. Thick, harsh, jagged lines that cut and slash across the page. Crimson ink spills across my canvas, my canvas now stained by the work of my own hands. There is a girl curled in a fetal position as these jagged lines dance above her. She wants to go to them, to give in, and she won’t. She can’t. She mustn't.

She has to be strong, right? Other people care for her, other people are dependent on her. Doing this, doing what she thinks she must do, would hurt more people than just herself.

And so, she won’t.

You were the person that inspired it all. You were the very thing that inspired me to create again. Like a well who’d long since run dry, I’d lost sight of who I was and who I was becoming. I had stopped drawing, I’d stopped believing, I’d stopped hoping for anything good. You had led me to believe that my art would get me nowhere, that what I created was nothing to the world. That I was nothing to the world. The universe does not care whether we live or die, and so I’d just stopped.

If I couldn’t create, then who was I?

Slowly, day by day, I slowly started to draw again. I forced myself to pick up the shattered remnants of myself to make myself whole. I wasn’t going to bow at your feet as you loomed above me, belt in your hand. I wasn’t going to cry and sob as you called me a coward, a mistake. I am not any of those things, I never have been. If anything, you’re the coward. Only a coward would hurt those he was supposed to love.

I found that empty well inside myself and that well began to overflow. Overflowing with emotions, with thoughts, with actions - I was a full vessel bursting at the seams, ready to conquer the world once more.

You are nothing to me, not anymore. If you ever read this paper, which you won’t because that’s just the type of person you are, I hope you learned something from what I wrote. I hope you understand the pain you caused me, this ink you caused me to bleed.

But, above all those things, I hope you’re sorry.