There is something so mesmerizing about the blankness of a Canvas. To those who aren’t as artistic-minded, it is merely what they perceive as: a rough white fabric, with utility as practical as any surrounding inanimate object. To the artistic-minded, it represents the starting line: a common point by which all creations of the universe began their existences. Yet to me, a blank canvas is my understanding of zero. It’s my understanding how my culture, my experiences, my values, and my life possess no meaning to many others in the world. It’s symbolic of an empty relationship: one in which two sides never exist to each other. There’s simply nothing to paint about: those who remain strangers to us in life will always share a blank canvas between us.
Artists might believe that blank canvases are a figment of zero imagination and symbolize the inevitability of failure — an inability to create something of one’s own imagination. However, when we pick up our paintbrushes and contaminate the canvas’ pureness with our first stroke, we must restrain ourselves in going too far. The pictures that are the most dangerous are not the ones we paint of our idealized selves, but those that describe a story between us and someone else that never existed in this universe. There are all too many aspects of these paintings that are enticing: the vibrant hues drawn out by the artist, the texture created by the mixture of paints, the story that the shapes and colors combine to tell become Medusa’s arms encircling you, dragging you to a point where you are restrained from being able to return to reality. Often times in life, it’s the prettiest that are the most dangerous: it’s almost as if the sheer beauty — almost unrealistic in some sense — of these things serve as a warning sign, screaming at you to not step one foot closer. Yet as humans, we share an Achilles heel: the inability to resist such temptations — particularly when they are as flashy, as alluring, and as radiant as the paintings we paint for the stories of those whom we integrate within our Core. It’s a reflection of nature itself — the prettiest, brightest-colored fauna and flora are the ones that will cause us to get sick should we eat them.
But once a painting has been displayed in the gallery for long enough, it’s almost natural that the audience would get sick of it. Whereas such a vibrant painting may have caught the eye of those at first, the painting soon becomes oblivious to all. Where one would previously find beauty, one now discovers a sense of trepidation: how could something ever be so beautiful in the first place? This is the trap constructed by our idealized relationships with those arounds us; all too often, we are too enticed by the perfect ideal of who someone could be, rather than accepting their shortcomings as nature of humanity. When a painting has been neglected without proper care, the painting itself ceases to be. Layer by layer, the covers wither away, and when enough time passes by, the canvas itself does too. All that’s left of the relationship is a blank canvas (or worse yet, no canvas at all). You and the other party cease to recognize that you two once knew each other well — you become ships greeting each other with flashing lights, then sailing away into that good night. Trajectories that converge at one location, but subsequently diverge infinitely away from each other. A red string tied to our fingers, seemingly leading to each other because it got too entangled within itself, but ultimately each leading to a different destination.
Two people who meet together for a brief but intense moment, then slip away from each other into the ether.
I picked up a paintbrush in July of 2020 and attenuated one such canvas. She possessed every single quality that I lacked in my life. While I perceived the world in an overly analytical and quantified manner, she complemented me with the creative juice that I never lacked: to dream of something seemingly completely unreasonable yet still helped both of us find meaning within life’s maze. While I was lacking the motivation to pursue my studies and the organizations which I led, she became more than a cheerleader — someone who made me realize that there was always going to be someone cheering me on to fully open myself up as a person when life became too much to bear. While I was a boat drifting in between places in life, she anchored me to the rocks of reason, preventing any impulsive currents from carrying me away.
We were unfortunate victims of the COVID Generation, a symptom of which was the burning desire to meet those around us after having been deprived of that sensory pleasure for over a year. Living off of 4 AM FaceTime calls, Netflix parties, and thousands of hours of zoom was simply unsustainable — I was more than eager to resume life just before the world had been shut down. A little too eager, in fact, to the point where I thought that my relationship with myself mattered far less than those with others — after all, having an entire year for me to really develop my relationship with myself was more than enough for a lifetime, right?
This canvas, although two thousand miles in width, was never too intimidating for me to paint. I came to appreciate the way she extracted the simple joys in life through her music. While never much of musically-minded individual myself, I was in awe by how she evoked historical images of love, death, happiness, grief. Her ability to capture emotion stood in direct contrast to my lack of self-awareness — whenever I selfishly saw the best in me, she always saw the best in those around her. There was something so beautiful and mesmerizing about the way in which one is able to see past the darkest paintings of the universe and find joy, passion, and meaning in the deepest wells of Tartarus. And just like that, our relationship as friends began to blossom. We found ourselves taking many of the same classes. As someone who never was eager to help others in a past life, I found that part of her spirit grew inside me and I discovered, more and more gradually, the joy of giving. In times when she was struggling to pass an assignment, I found solace in I helped her reason through and construct a solution to the problem. In times when I was struggling to pass life’s hardest exam — understanding oneself — she invigorated within me reason and common sense, in scenarios when I would have let an impulse take the best of my actions.
Over time, this became one of the most beautiful paintings that I had constructed in my life. Each interaction between us became a stroke on our canvas, crafted in a delicate yet ardent manner. The Zoom calls where we’d work on assignments together and the contentment I relished in when I helped her understand a difficult concept. The times when we explore campus together on night walks and learned about the intricacies of our lives. The times when we were both learned how to best support each other when tension arose between us and other relationships in our lives. We learned how to support each other, and in the process I began to see herself as part of my whole. Indeed, I painted our canvas in that way — weaving her story into mine, entangling our narratives until a knot was created that could not be undone. I cherished every moment I spent with her, and over time I desired more and more of that dopamine-induced rush. I admired my creation so much that its beauty fully engulfed me — to the point where I failed to see that the other side of the canvas was blank.
The Core of a painting is always the story that it tells most vividly. Before we met, my core was simple to comprehend: my family, my close friends, my passions, and my ambitions. When you choose to bring someone else into your Core, it’s super easy to lose track of the things that mattered and were meaningful to you previously. When you begin to weave your stories together into one, your naïve mind ceases to perceive the dangers of the outside world, creating an airtight bubble that engulfs you and the other person. The desire for you to be with the other person — something that you believe strengthens your relationship with them — ironically can destroy many of the other relationships that previously were part of your Core. The more vividly constructed a painting’s Core, the deeper you become engulfed into an infinite flywheel, one that deprives you of the ability to take care of the needs of the self because you are always trying to be sure that you are satisfying the needs of the other.
Looking back, this was the picture I painted of someone whom I clearly had made part of my core. She was somebody I wanted to spend all of my time with — to the point where I was not spending enough time with myself to understand what I truly wanted out of a relationship. There were many instances in which I put her needs over my own — taking her and her friend to get their second shot of the vaccine just in case any of them experienced severe symptoms after the second shot, helping her understand a concept before I even understood it myself. This was the moment in which the painting on the canvas captivated me the most — to a point where I could no longer perceive much of reality due to its enticing beauty. The climax representing such a moment is an interesting feeling — you constantly desire more of the feeling just like on the ascent, but you begin to develop apprehensions of what could happen if your worst fears came true.
The canvas finally withered away one warm night in Spring. On a walk just like any other, she expressed that as much as I’d like to believe that we couldn’t be whole without each other, I wasn’t the piece that completed her jigsaw puzzle: we were too different in her eyes. During moments that she wanted to focus on herself, I was always asking to take up those moments too. The restraint that kept me feeling grounded became non-existent: I was more focused turning out relationship into something more rather than focusing on my own relationship with myself. She was a big believer in self-actualization: her ultimate desire was for us both to ascend Maslow’s Pyramid; however, this was only possible if we did not make the climb together.
As the layers of paint continued to peel away, I questioned why I could find something so beautiful when there were so many impurities obscured by the outer layers of paint. How did I so quickly idealize our relationship and see both of us as complements to the creation of a whole when I didn’t even know what “whole” truly meant and created my own illusion by being enticed by the beauty itself? Why did I let one painting — out of numerous others — deprive me of my external sensor pleasures to the point where I sought those in the painting, and only the painting itself? Reflecting on those experiences that I shared together, I learned that instead of the painting being a collaborative artwork, I was painting the parts meant to be painted by two people alone. I was the one who initiated every interaction between us because I never gave her the space for her to initiate any interactions. I was always the one who asked her about how her day went so that I could try to find time for us to spend together. Why, in such a case would such a relationship fall apart? I never gave us the time to really reflect on who we were because as part of my Core because I felt that I had the obligation to spend as much time as I could with her. I was willing to offer my all for her to thrive, yet I expected nothing in return. With each peeling layer of paint, I beat myself up over the original painting’s entrancing, hypnotizing distorted reality. Each layer that was removed revealed something darker than the previous: masked under a bright layer of color, I saw every lie that I told myself. That she was part of my core. That I needed to spend every moment I could with her so I could feel validated. That we couldn’t be whole without each other. I accepted all of these false promises to myself because it was easier for me to believe that our relationship was free of imperfections when she simply was not willing to insert herself into the equation.
Today, I still am scrubbing away the remaining streaks of paint on our canvas. What remained are shapes: the shapes that defined the foundations of the relationship I thought we had because I thought we could not be whole without each other. I always took a circle to mean “whole” — yet when I scrubbed away half of each circle, I came to see that there was nothing fragmented about the semicircles themselves. Indeed, semicircles are whole shapes too — I could thrive just fine without her being a part of my life. This process was the most painful of all — coming to realize that I needed to discover the joys in life without her to anchor me down, and for me to thrive and explore how my passions transform into impact with myself, and myself only, as the tour guide. She may have moved on because she found this notion of a “whole” in someone else rather than myself. And that’s okay, because this sense of whole within self is something I can only discover alone. I’ll be happy for her because I know that genuine happiness for those around us is a testament to one truly becoming whole with their self.
How do we stop painting such idealized paintings of those in our lives in the first place? For me, one necessary undertaking is exercising the proper emotional restraint — and more importantly, figuring out when to take a step back and disengage, and when to re-engage as well. Once we first got to know each other well, I never exhibited any form of emotional restraint: every small interaction that we shared was grounds for me to interpret it as something more — no matter how large or how small the offering was, I always bit off more than I could chew to the point where I felt deeply overwhelmed by emotion. And once we got past the initial barriers of being strangers, I never disengaged. It was akin to being intoxicated — the feeling of inebriation to the point where one ceases to be aware of their surroundings and decreases their inhibitors to the point where they are unable to perceive the right moments to take a step back. These moments were precisely the ones that I lacked; they allowed me to develop the misconception that everyone was free of impurities. If we were to rewind time back to the beginning, I would never paint in such a way that demonstrates my lack of awareness about the situation — rather, being wise enough to know when to disengage and re-engage is the characteristic in a person I desire the most. Even in the aftermath, there are still instances in which I lack this kind of emotional restraint: when a trigger about this relationship emerges, I often lose the ability to think clearly and will begin to act on an impulse. The misconceptions that others have about our relationship often emerge as the biggest trigger as I become hyper-focused on what other people think of me due to a lack of self-confidence and the desire for others’ validation.
For now, I’ll be putting my paintbrush down. There’s always going to be a limited supply of paint for the infinite number of canvases in our lives — it’s never worth burning through the supply too quickly because you seek validation from those around you. I no longer consider a new relationship as “falling into love,” because the word “falling” implies an urgency to move quickly and a lack of restraint. Rather, I want to consider love as something that you step into. Taking the time to really get to understand someone, instead of perceiving them as a romantic partner from the get-go, is the ultimate test of emotional maturity. Even if we’re adults, we still need to take baby steps because it’s important for us to learn from each other instead of leading each other into our Core — a point of no escape. It is precisely these steps that prevent the canvas from being half-painted. Both partners need to be equal contributors — for that deep, meaningful connection can only result when each side will feel complete with the other. I’ll know that I have found that person when I know that I am not seeking such a relationship for my person validation, but rather that she is someone who needs me just as much as I need her. The painting that we create at that point is no longer dark streaks of paint covered by an unrealistic hue of colors, but rather a flowing masterpiece that reflects two stories gradually blending into one whole, never being entangled within the other.