Page 35 of The Oath We Give

This is the only way I’m comfortable putting a price tag on my art anyway. Knowing it’s helping Hedi and her team. Knowing I’m doing something to help.

“You do all of this, the teaching, subjecting yourself to these people that you clearly dislike, but you won’t come to a single meeting?” She lifts a blonde eyebrow, watching me carefully.

“It’s a complex.” I shrug. “There are other people who need those meetings far more than I do. I’d only be wasting resources.”

When we first met, she tried for months to get me to go to the group session. I’d rather pluck my eyeballs out with tweezers, and I’d told her that. I’m not a fan of pouring my trauma out in front of people, and plus, I meant what I said.

There are other women who need it far more than I do.

However, when she asked if I’d be interested in offering some free classes to survivors, my answer had been an immediate yes. I refuse a lot of things, but I needed that, something to grip on to keep me from going under.

I’d never taught art life, and honestly, I don’t consider myself a teacher. I really just explain the different mediums and how best to apply them to canvas. The rest is them. Whatever they want to create in the two hours we spend together is entirely up to them.

They can talk or be silent. Paint or draw. Sculpt or mold. There is no expectation to be anything but broken when they walk inside of here.

In art, you’re given permission to be the ugliest version of yourself just so you can make something beautiful from it.

She sighs, tilting her head to the right a little as she shakes it. “I don’t understand why you do that.”

I arch an eyebrow. “Do what?”

“That.” She motions to my body. “Just because you have money doesn’t mean your experience, what you went through, isn’t valid, baby. Money can never take that pain away. You’re allowed to hurt. You’re allowed to talk about it just as much as the next person.”

There is a pit in my stomach, heavy rocks weighing me down, making me feel sick. I know she means well, and I hear what she’s saying, but she’ll never understand.

The guilt, the shame.

How every day I hate myself more and more when I think about how I’d crave his touch at night when it was cold, that food didn’t even matter when he’d come down those steps. I just wanted to see him. To be around him.

It makes me sick knowing how much I loved him. What the fuck was wrong with me? Who does that?

Instead of replying, I nod, turning my attention back to my painting and hoping my silence is enough for her, and because it’s Hedi, because she is kind, it is.

“When did you paint this?” she asks, seamlessly changing the subject.

“A little over a year ago.”

I remember the four whole days I spent on it. The way I stumbled out of bed at midnight and to this very studio, just to stare at an empty canvas until the birds chirped outside.

It took me an entire day to pick up a brush. To will myself to create what I felt inside of my head. I could see it so clearly, but it was as if my hands had forgotten how to paint. Which is painful enough on its own.

The one thing you’re good at, the one thing you feel like you were meant to do, and suddenly you can’t? It’s heartbreaking.

But when the brush touched the canvas, muscle memory kicked in. Every stroke and splatter that laid the oil painting in front of me came out like blood from a split vein.

“What’s its name? Paintings have names, right?”

I stare at the canvas.

The painting is a man’s face divided into two parts. The top half seamlessly blends into a darkening background, a tiny cosmos far off in the distance adding a surreal element.The lower half of his face is visible. It took me hours to get it right. A mouth drawn in a harsh line, a blueish-gray tint to his skin, unmoving as if he’s only a statue.

It’s impossible for anyone to know who inspired it. That most of these paintings that some stranger purchased are from a raw, deep, painful place inside of my soul.

However, the universe is keen.

As of late, it seems to constantly remind me that there isoneperson who knows about that place in me. Heard it. Witnessed it. Calmed it.

Goosebumps scatter across my arms as a familiar voice answers Hedi’s question.