The Girl in the Painting

Ansel Bray, an artist known around the world for his tragic hiatus from the canvas.

Ansel Bray, a broody, handsome man not known by me, at all.

Long dark hair, blue eyes, and dimpled cheeks. I’ve never met her, but her image is imprinted in my mind. An angel muse who inspires me to paint again.

There is something about him. Something that spurs a need to be as close to him as possible. A need to find out why.

There is something about her. Something that draws me in. Something that urges me to find out what her presence means.

Why does the girl in his painting look so much like me?

Who is this girl, and why can I see her so vividly?

I shouldn’t fall in love with him.

I shouldn’t fall in love at all.

But fate plays her hand.

But fate has other plans.

The lines of my life will blur.

The needs of my heart will change.

What a beautiful mess we’ve made.

Ansel

I watch the way the brush swipes across the canvas, and it’s like my mind is directing my hand without me as my fingers move in soft, fluid strokes.

Slowly and with precision, I add blues and purples and etch grayish hues into the color palette. Instinctively, my hand moves to the right spot, building a new picture that’s locked inside my mind, a visual that’s only released through brushstrokes and paint and silent poetry. It is a reflection of my own mind, the way I think and feel and see the world around me.

This, painting—creating—is my home.

My passion and my life.

I look away from my work and move my eyes around my studio, taking in the order and chaos, the blank canvases, the finished paintings, anything and everything I can swallow up hungrily.

God, it doesn’t get any better than this…

This is living.

But when I move my gaze back to the canvas, the brush disappears from my hands, and the colors of the painting fade away in a pixelated breeze.

A gasping breath escapes my lungs and encourages my heart to follow its lead. It races inside my chest and vibrates its erratic rhythm against my rib cage.

It was just a dream, Ansel.

I blink my eyes open and, instead of the light of day filtering in through my pupils, darkness replaces everything.

Fuck.

Waking up is harsh when your dreams are better than reality.

Sometimes, my dreams are so vivid I find myself forgetting my sight is gone. I’ll open my eyes and expect to see my bedroom, expect to see the sun peeking in through the windows, expect to find crumpled blankets over my body and the paintings on my walls.

And then I remember.

I remember the physical pain and the actual trauma of the accident, but mostly, I remember the moment I woke up to the heightened sounds of a dark abyss. The moment I knew my future would be bleak and empty.

Every single fucking day, I wake up and choke on the grief of it all.

I’m blind. And I have to come to terms with the fact that I’m a painter who can’t paint. An artist who can’t create. A man who can’t even see his own fucking dick hanging between his legs.

It’s been nearly a year since I lost my sight, and a part of me wonders if, eventually, even my dreams will change to the unsatisfyingly bottomless pit of monochrome shadows.

It would be both a blessing and a nightmare.

Because it’s the dreams that keep me going.

Yet, it’s also the dreams that tear me apart.

Each foray into the unattainable makes the process of mourning start all over again. Truly, you don’t know what you’re missing until it’s gone.

It’s a tortured process, but eventually, my grief becomes less acute, and I ease myself out of my bed, using only memory and sense of touch.

The bathroom I can remember, but no longer see, sits just off my bedroom—a convenience I never fully understood until after the accident.

While I piss, wash my hands and face, and brush my teeth, I visualize the stone tiles beneath my feet and remember the soft white hues of the walls. I picture the porcelain fixtures and the small gold-framed abstract painting that reflects itself in the mirror.

And I visualize myself.

My face, my hair, my jaw, my eyes. I know what they looked like a year ago, but that’s where it ends. Time has worn the lines and muddied the details of my features in ways I’ll never witness.

I slip on reflective aviators over what’s left of my eyes, and by the time I make it into the kitchen, the sounds of the front door clicking open and my brother’s voice bellowing out from the entryway reach my ears.

“Ansel!” he calls out. “You up, bro?”

“In the kitchen,” I grumble as I attempt to make coffee without it turning into a disaster.

The sink is two steps from the coffeepot.