Page 34 of Give My Everything
Setting down my palette and brush, I stretch my arms high above my head then twist slowly left to right, hoping to get the kinks out of my back.
Painting has been…a little less comfortable since the pregnancy. I mean, technicallyeverythinghas been a little less comfortable, but sitting for long periods of time in front of a canvas has been particularly bad.
Maybe I need to get a new chair or some kind of support? I don’t know. I never seem to know.
Instead of going back to the unfinished canvas, I decide it’s time for a break, maybe a walk down to the water or a solo lunch at Mary’s, if my stomach decides not to be difficult.
I leave the canvas sitting on the easel in front of the window in my dad’s mostly unused study and head in search of my keys.
Once they’re tucked into my front pocket, my phone and credit card slipped into the back, I leave the house, wandering along the alley to the right of our estate that I know will take me all the way down to The Strand and open up to the water.
Being back in Hermosa Beach feels like…a bad trip.
Not that I have much experience with drugs. I have been given enough to know when it doesn’t feel good, though.
That’s what being here feels like.
What beinghomefeels like.
Nothing feels right, or safe, or warm.
It’s all cold, emotional, upset.
And then I wonder, not for the first time, if I should have just stayed in Santa Barbara, kept my small apartment and my shitty car and the life I was living that wassodifferent than the way things are here.
When Paige told me she could see me shopping on State Street, I wanted to laugh.
I haven’t bought anything on State Street in years. I didn’t have the money. Sure, I hadaccessto it. But I didn’t use it. Mostly because I didn’t feel like lying to my parents any more than I already was.
I was only enrolled at the college they agreed to for a single semester. Just one. One was enough. Enough for me to realize that no matter where you go, people are the same.
Selfish. Manipulative. Angry.
One semester was enough to break me until I didn’t know if the pieces would ever be put back together.
So I left. Took a semester off and used the tuition check from my parents to party and lose myself in the faceless, nameless men I thought could make me feel better.
The ones who liked to use me, too. Slip inside of me and distract me from my disaster of a life. Make me feel good again when I couldn’t find a way to get there myself.
And then Josslyn about kicked down my door.
My old roommate first semester, before I fled our hall like a thief in the night. She was the only true friend I ever had at that school, and she wasn’t going to let me shit my life down the drain.
She helped me apply to Alta Mesa Academy, a small art college in the foothills of Santa Barbara.
I had to lie to my parents about where I was going to school. My parents, my brothers, the friends I had at home—it just felt like everything was a lie. Everything was a lie, all the time.
So I stayed away. Called rarely. Kept things to myself. Hid who I was. Who Iwasand who I wasbecoming.
And my life changed. I thought it would be enough, but apparently it’s not. It never is.
When I finally make it down to the beach, I let the breaking water rush up and cover my toes, the salty coolness sending a chill racing through my body and dampening the hem of my jeans.
I might regret that later, but for now it feels right.
The gravelly discomfort of the sand getting lodged between my skin and the fabric is a reminder that I’m alive.
A reminder that Ienjoybeing alive, even if things are hard and unsure and uncomfortable.
