Sitting upon the stairs of the loft that looked as if it transcended to the sky above my childhood bedroom and held more treasures than my five year old mind could process- would it be that I am awaiting my knight in shining armor to rescue me from my confinement? Maybe. Somedays. I always dreamed of such things after watching Sleeping Beauty in the living room for the five hundredth time. But sometimes, sometimes I sit. No slouching. Prim like a spring flower. Bleach blonde girls cascading my face no matter my attempts to contain it with my yellow scrunchy. The silence of it all makes it complete. I close my eyes, and I wait. Imagining that my very own Picasso is sitting across the room, drawing me in awe of the numerous amounts of times I have read about one of his muses, Sylvette, of age nineteen. Beautiful, with big dreams, but shy. Much like myself.
I did not hold the desire of being drawn because of radiating beauty that exuded from my aura. No, it was rather that I wanted someone to see me, to draw me, to see me in a way that I could not see myself, even at the earliest age of five years old.
Sneaking that silly old book into my backpack to bring to kindergarten with me to crack open and point out that she would one day be me, nineteen with a thick mound of hair that would create a massive ponytail that would be plastered across the world for generations to come. In the many forms of museum we hold in this world: hotel rooms, restaurants, city walls, notebooks- anything that would hold this ethereal piece of artwork.
It is on 12:49 am, on July 1 2018 that I am in the late stage of my nineteenth year- having achieved the goal of being the girl with the great mass of hair that breaks up to three hair elastics per day, but not yet to be transcribed to any form of art.
Above is an excerpt I wrote over the summer of 2018 while I was feeling I wasn’t enough. Sometimes I tend to get caught up in desire to be an art of fiction, especially as a young girl who grew up with an overly romanticized idea of this world. As pop and social media culture becomes more relevant to our society I feel it is important for us to remind ourselves that our purpose is deeper than being depicted on a wall- where the painting holds more value than the muse- but to be the most colorful version of yourself you could possibly be- and to let people depict that as an art. Be your own muse.