Her nose is teal, her skin turns from blue-green to purple at the edges, and her hair is the color of a struck match, so much of it that it falls across half her face and keeps it there. What’s left uncovered are her eyes, lowered and half-closed, as if she’s still deciding whether I can be trusted.
I painted her a few years ago and tagged her #arttherapy without thinking much about it, because that’s simply what she was, something I needed to make before I knew why.
When someone asked me recently who she was supposed to be, I reached for words and kept coming back with ones that almost fit: future, alien, angel, ethereal, confused. Each of them touched some part of her, and none of them could hold all of her at once.
We’re taught that naming a feeling is how we come to understand it, and most of the time that’s true. But some feelings arrive in colors that were never meant to sit together, the way a teal nose was never meant to sit on a face, and the moment you give them a name, they shrink to fit it.
She’s one of those. On some days she looks hopeful to me, and on others she looks lost, and somewhere along the way I stopped needing to decide which.
Lately, I understand her better than I used to.
I still don’t know her name, and I’ve stopped looking for one. She doesn’t seem to want to be explained. She seems to want what all of us want, to be looked at long enough to be seen.
Is there something in your life you’ve stopped trying to name? Tell me in the comments. And if this one stayed with you, subscribe below so the next one finds you.
