Nothing lasts forever, though. By the time I was fifteen, my father’s business choices had become worse and worse, my brother in an effort to prove himself to our father had set up business deals that had gone wrong, and soon people were shooting up our homes and stealing from us. They even beat my brother half to death. He was paralyzed from the waist down after a drug deal gone bad. I lived in constant fear something was going to happen to me, that I would walk outside and someone would kill me to send a message to my father. The stress of it all became too much; I had no one to turn to. My mother had died long ago, and both my father and brother were so thick into the life I knew they wouldn’t understand how I felt. I was spiraling out of control with nothing to hold onto.
I did the only thing I thought I had control over, the same thing my mother had done years ago just two weeks after having me. I swallowed a bottle full of sleeping pills. Imagine my surprise when I woke up, not dead. My father had found me shortly after I had tried to end my own life and rushed me to the hospital where they were able to pump my stomach and get the pills out. I ended up in an inpatient psychiatric facility. At nineteen, I had tried to take my own life to escape the hell I was in.
The doctors and therapists tried everything they could to break me out of my depressed state. Medicines, therapy, meditation, they tried all of it, but nothing helped. I tried to fake my happiness so they would let me out. My father was waiting for me to come home; there was no way out. I knew I would try to end my life again, and I couldn’t do it there.
It was the day I chose to sit in on a group therapy session that changed my life. I was only going to sit there and observe, let the doctor see I was putting in an effort. It was all about perceptions in the hospital. If you made it seem like you were getting better, that’s what the doctors believed. One of the therapists was conducting a painting class, and she said the colors and the pictures soothed people. I watched as she swiped on her small canvas, and quiet overcame the room as others tried to do the same. It seemed so relaxing, and before I knew it, I was asking to try.
Once my paintbrush hit the blank canvas, and the first stripe of blazing color left my brush, I was hooked. The connection was instantaneous, and for the first time in my entire life, I found something that sparked a passion inside of me. From then on, all I wanted to do was paint, and I was good at it. I was able to look at something and know what I needed to do to bring it to life on the canvas.
Slowly, I started to get better. Then I realized my art could be a way out. I could use art as an outlet, a way to escape from my father and brother’s thumb. When I was well enough to go home, the therapists there raised a few bucks for me to get the basics I needed to paint. I used it to make art I’d be able to sell. It was all my own money, and it was all legit. Slowly my popularity started to grow, and soon I’d saved enough money to open a small shop.
Of course, the problems of my past followed me. My father owed someone some money, and they came through me to get to him. When I couldn’t come up with the money my father needed to pay his debt, they torched my shop. There was nothing left but ash and a few singed paintbrushes. It was a blessing in disguise, though.
That same night, my father and brother were trying to sell a big score, except they were trying to sell it to the wrong people. The buyers were feds. It was a sting, and my dumbass father and brother fell for it. My father shot and killed the two, not realizing the rest of the unit had already cornered them. My brother and father went to jail that day, and they’d never get out, both of them got life without parole.
I was sad. Not only did I lose my place, but I also lost anyone I’d ever called family all in one night. The blessing in disguise here? Now I was free. I was cut a check from the fire insurance, which was more than what the place was actually worth, and I took off for a new place. A new town. A fresh start. I could run away, and no one would ever know about my past.
That was what I found here, on the back half of the pier among all the small shops and people arriving after long trips at sea. I was able to get a few clients here in town, and I was also able to set up weekly sip and paint parties, which seemed to be all the rave nowadays. It didn’t bring in the money I was used to having as a kid, but it paid the bills and put food in my belly. That was all I needed.
I walked into my small shop, the blank canvas I’d left there the night before still on the easel waiting for me. I took a
