The Love of My Life

I stood there staring at the blank canvas. Who, or what, was the love of my life? I must've sat there for thirty minutes thinking about what I would create, how I would paint the love of my life.

I sat down and thought about all the happiest moments in my life. I thought about my first few Christmas parties with my family, playing in the rain, waking up at five a.m. on Christmas morning and ripping through presents, my first day of school, making my first friends, holding my first dog I got for my birthday, summer trips we took to Florida every summer during the last week of July. Then my mind wandered to the seasonal things that brought happiness. Like the blooming flowers in the spring that brought on runny noses and itchy eyes, seeing butterflies, the smell of rain, sitting outside to read a book. Barbecues in the summer, the long hot days spent outside, the late nights spent with friends and family, spending as much time in pools or at the beach, the smell of suncreen and bug spray. Fall is my favorite, though. The cool weather, sweaters, booties, the beautiful leaves that make the roads in my small town look like a painting, the gorgeous fall colors, campfires, preparing for Halloween and Thanksgiving. Winter. The weather finally getting cold where I live, warm clothes and hot chocolate, Christmas time, that one good snow fall that we get if we're lucky, the end of the semester, and all the time spent with friends and family.

I could think of tons and tons of happy memories. But in between all those wonderful memories that brought me love and happiness, I remembered the bad ones. The people that made me doubt myself, the things that made me hate my body, the moments I wanted to change myself and my life. The nights I cried myself to sleep. The times I cried so hard I threw up. The words and thoughts that made me feel worthless. The days I wondered if anyone loved me, if my life was worth living. The days I thought about ending it all.

That's when I realized that there wasn't one thing that could be the love of my life, and there wasn't one thing that I could paint to represent the love of my life. So I just started painting, not trying to paint one thing, using all the colors I had.

I stepped back to look at it. In one corner it reminded me of winter, with silvers, blues and golds. The next corner reminded me of spring, with bright pastel colors, almost looking like flowers. Below that, the corner had bright blues, greens, yellows, and reds. It was summer. The corner next to summer was obviously fall, with marroons, dark yellow, oranges, and browns, perfectly blended. Almost looking like fall leaves. Each season connected, the colors coming together. Like winter turning into spring, spring into summer, summer into fall, and fall into winter. They drifted into the middle looking like a beautiful cloud of colors representing all the love and happiness in my life. But if you look close enough within this rainbow of colors, you can see patches that are black or grey. Which represented all the dark moments in my life.

This was because the love of my life wasn't one thing or person. It was all the people that have helped build me up, all the people I love, the memories that I've had with them and the memories I've made alone. The love of my life is my life.