things to sell. The ironic thing is that I’m making the money to help save up for getting out of L.A., but it’s harder for me to paint when I have less time because I’m working. It’s just a vicious cycle, over and over again.
And add a ridiculously sexy guy to the mix, and it’s chaos.
Fuck, I haven’t really had much me time to myself lately, now that I think about it. No wonder I’m starting to suffocate from everything. When I get like this, when everything starts pressing in on me, creating all this pressure on my chest and on my brain? I lose it, I can’t help it. The last time that happened, it wasn’t a pretty thing. I try to tell myself that it won’t happen again, that keeping these things to myself is better than letting them all out constantly, and part of the painting helps with that. My medicine helps too, but it’s hard to stay on course. It’s hard to not let the anxiety get to me.
I throw my paintbrush at the wall, the tears welling up in my eyes. I need to just let it go, let myself relax and stop thinking about everything so intensely. “ Ramy, sugar, you never let your brain breathe,” my mom always says.
She has no idea how right she is.
I shake my hands out, letting my thumb touch each of my fingertips in order and back again just like I’ve always done when I’m trying to slow down when I start having a panic attack. I take in deep breaths, letting them out slowly, and pay no attention to the reddish blotches behind my eyelids. They’re nothing, I’m nothing. Everything is nothing and all it is, is pure nothingness.
It sounds crazy, I know. My head is a weird place to be pretty much all the time, so I organize my thoughts by paint, one color at a time.
Reaching down under my bed, I pull out my big flat portfolio folder from college. I know plenty of people who hate looking at their older work, but all it does is soothe and validate me. To me it says I have talent, and here’s proof .
I run my hand over the first item on top, a mixed-media piece I did in my senior year. I’ve never liked doing mixed-media anything, it creates too much chaos in my mind and although I know a lot of people who like that, I’m not one of them. Paint has always been my thing, will probably always be my thing, but I have a fond respect for the other visual arts. The sandpaper I used in certain spots is rough on my fingers, taking me back to that frustrating moment in time when I was a kid and working on my first portfolio to get into a special art school for kids. I was trying to be cool and different and decided to use sandpaper as a means of roughing up part of my textured image, but ended up destroying it and ruining my chances of getting in.
Beneath it is the bright vivid colors of the jungle painting I did based on one of my favorite paintings, Tiger in a Tropical Storm, by Henri Rousseau. I tried to do it with bright colors and I think I pulled it off pretty well, but I still laugh every time I see it, the tiger’s eyes wide, sort of like a caricature instead of a real tiger.
I flip through the rest of the portfolio, smiling at each page for different reasons, touching everything and remembering all the moments that led me to where I am now. It helps, if only a little bit.
And when I go to stand up in front of my huge wall of canvas again, I’m sure that this time when I pick up my paintbrush I’ll know what to do with it.
I pick it up and nothing. Fucking zero anything. The right half of the wall is covered in what I thought was an abstract look of time, what I decided to do right after the night with Benji. It was supposed to represent how time controls us all, an outline of a man under an umbrella with time raining down on him. But I need more, something more to make this less abstract and more realistic. I don’t know what kind of story I wanted my painting to tell other than the bad timing theme.
Frustrated, I calmly put down my brush this time and let out a sigh to myself.
And add a ridiculously sexy guy to the mix, and it’s chaos.
Fuck, I haven’t really had much me time to myself lately, now that I think about it. No wonder I’m starting to suffocate from everything. When I get like this, when everything starts pressing in on me, creating all this pressure on my chest and on my brain? I lose it, I can’t help it. The last time that happened, it wasn’t a pretty thing. I try to tell myself that it won’t happen again, that keeping these things to myself is better than letting them all out constantly, and part of the painting helps with that. My medicine helps too, but it’s hard to stay on course. It’s hard to not let the anxiety get to me.
I throw my paintbrush at the wall, the tears welling up in my eyes. I need to just let it go, let myself relax and stop thinking about everything so intensely. “ Ramy, sugar, you never let your brain breathe,” my mom always says.
She has no idea how right she is.
I shake my hands out, letting my thumb touch each of my fingertips in order and back again just like I’ve always done when I’m trying to slow down when I start having a panic attack. I take in deep breaths, letting them out slowly, and pay no attention to the reddish blotches behind my eyelids. They’re nothing, I’m nothing. Everything is nothing and all it is, is pure nothingness.
It sounds crazy, I know. My head is a weird place to be pretty much all the time, so I organize my thoughts by paint, one color at a time.
Reaching down under my bed, I pull out my big flat portfolio folder from college. I know plenty of people who hate looking at their older work, but all it does is soothe and validate me. To me it says I have talent, and here’s proof .
I run my hand over the first item on top, a mixed-media piece I did in my senior year. I’ve never liked doing mixed-media anything, it creates too much chaos in my mind and although I know a lot of people who like that, I’m not one of them. Paint has always been my thing, will probably always be my thing, but I have a fond respect for the other visual arts. The sandpaper I used in certain spots is rough on my fingers, taking me back to that frustrating moment in time when I was a kid and working on my first portfolio to get into a special art school for kids. I was trying to be cool and different and decided to use sandpaper as a means of roughing up part of my textured image, but ended up destroying it and ruining my chances of getting in.
Beneath it is the bright vivid colors of the jungle painting I did based on one of my favorite paintings, Tiger in a Tropical Storm, by Henri Rousseau. I tried to do it with bright colors and I think I pulled it off pretty well, but I still laugh every time I see it, the tiger’s eyes wide, sort of like a caricature instead of a real tiger.
I flip through the rest of the portfolio, smiling at each page for different reasons, touching everything and remembering all the moments that led me to where I am now. It helps, if only a little bit.
And when I go to stand up in front of my huge wall of canvas again, I’m sure that this time when I pick up my paintbrush I’ll know what to do with it.
I pick it up and nothing. Fucking zero anything. The right half of the wall is covered in what I thought was an abstract look of time, what I decided to do right after the night with Benji. It was supposed to represent how time controls us all, an outline of a man under an umbrella with time raining down on him. But I need more, something more to make this less abstract and more realistic. I don’t know what kind of story I wanted my painting to tell other than the bad timing theme.
Frustrated, I calmly put down my brush this time and let out a sigh to myself.
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