Black.
I started swirling black paint on my canvas. Allowing it to drip its own pattern down, taking shape, like it had a mind of its own.
This color described my days and what I was now. An empty vessel with a black hole in the center.
For weeks, I felt like I was floating into nothingness. I had nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for. I was taking one day at a time, taking each breath with the sole purpose of making it to the next. Nothing more. I was alive. But I wasn’t really living.
That day I had woken up in the hospital, everything crumbled before me. It was the moment that I felt I’d lost my past, my present, even my future.
The man that I loved walked out of my life with no hopes of ever coming back. The life I wanted to nurture inside me was gone, even before I could fully acknowledge its presence. And then the doctors said I had a small percentage of conceiving life inside me again.
For a while, I blamed myself. I should have been stronger. I should have been calmer. I could take losing everything…but not the innocent life inside of me and the man who had given me that life.
I wasn’t a doctor, so I didn’t fully understand what they told me at the hospital, and the minute I heard miscarriage and cancer, I completely blacked out. Everything I saw was a blur, and everything I heard was blah, blah, blah.
My friends and my family kept telling me that it wasn’t my fault. But the man I’d hurt the most when I lost the baby had completely shut me out of his world. So I knew that he blamed me, as much as I blamed myself. He agreed to the operation. I was told that he had been with me during the time that I was out.
“Your cancer was advancing…it posed a threat to your life. Travis didn’t want to wait. He made a decision to save your life,” my mother told me. “Regardless of what the consequences might be to your baby. It was a difficult choice.”
I would have risked it. I wouldn’t have agreed to the operation. I would have waited until the baby was strong enough to survive. But I was unconscious, sedated due to the severe pain, and my husband made that decision for me. Surgery was the best option. Removing the affected organ was necessary. I started miscarrying even with the doctors’ best efforts. My pregnancy was sensitive. I couldn’t fight for him even if I wanted to.
When I woke up in the hospital, I swear I could smell Travis’s aftershave on my pillow. My mother told me that he’d stayed with me while I was unconscious. But he was gone the minute I opened my eyes. My already broken heart was shattered to a million pieces. I hugged my pillow to myself and drowned myself on what was left of Travis’s presence beside me…his scent, his memory.
Red.
I filled my brush with red paint and swirled it on the corner farthest from the black. Now, my strokes were even more defined and less free-form. I brushed the paint upward with as much vigor as one wrist motion would allow.
The red reflected much of what I felt inside, too. I felt broken about losing the life I’d loved inside of me. I felt rage and loathing when the doctor told me that the other ovary left with me was not as healthy as it should be. Treatment was required. But I was told I had about a one-third chance of conceiving again.
The strokes on my canvas became rougher and more urgent as I remembered how angry I was. And worse, I didn’t know who to direct that anger at.
To whomever in my family had given me this bad string of genes. To myself, because I should have taken better care. I should have done more. I should have done routine checkups when I was younger so I could have prevented it. I should have paid attention to every missed period or any irregularity in my menstrual cycle. I should have gone to the doctor sooner.
I took more of the red paint and smudged it in downward, circular motion.
I remembered that when the doctor told me that I would have so much difficulty conceiving, I realized I had gotten mad at Travis, too. He’d made that choice for me. I would have risked my life just to have the baby. And even if I’d only had one child in my life, I would have been complete as a woman.
Blue
I took a new paintbrush and dipped it in blue acrylic paint. I stroked it lightly on the white space between the red and the black, making stronger strokes in the center and softer where it met the other colors.
It had been months since I’d gotten out of the hospital.
I did call Travis before I was discharged. I could still remember that conversation in my head because it was the last time I’d spoken to him.
“I’m sorry I lost your baby,” I said in a broken voice.
He took a deep breath. Then he said, “At least you’re alive and safe.”
“It doesn’t matter now, really,” I whispered.
“It does to your family,” he countered.
“Why did you do it, Travis? Why didn’t you take a chance? I would have waited until it was safer.”
I heard his sharp intake of breath. “Maybe…I needed to save you one last time.”
That broke me, but I refused to let a whimper escape my lips.
“I won’t ever be the same! What’s the point of my womanhood if I can’t conceive?”
He was silent for a while. Then he said, “The right guy for you will love you enough not to care. At least now, you can’t really say I raped you just to get an heir.” His voice was so unemotional, it completely made me mad and sad at the same time. I wanted to cry so hard—right after I gave him a good slap in the face.
There was a long silence. Then finally, he asked, “Do you have anything else you want to say to me?”
I love you. But I didn’t say that out loud. I couldn’t. His cold demeanor made me abandon all hope that this phone call would fix anything between us. Travis had caved in. The Travis who’d loved me was now buried underneath the hundred masks he was wearing. I didn’t even recognize the man I was speaking to anymore.
“Goodbye,” I said weakly.
Again, another long pause. “Goodbye, Brianne.”
Purple.
I took a brush and dipped it in purple. I swirled this around at the point where blue met with red. I continued with my strokes until the blending and continuation of the hues seemed flawless.
I was now back in my apartment in Connecticut. It had been months since I’d gotten out of the hospital. I had my mother move my stuff out from Travis’s apartment.
Even after I had completely moved out, I still hadn’t heard from him. He didn’t call me or attempt to see me. And it broke my heart as much as it made me angry.
I asked my mother for a break. I told her I needed a sabbatical from work. I had a little money saved up. I could take care of myself without working for about a year. And I needed to figure out what I was going to do with Travis and our marriage.
News of our separation reached the ears of some of my relatives. Many of them offered sympathies and encouragement. Some of them still believed Travis and I were going to work things out.
“It’s Travis and you!” my aunt Victoria told me over the phone.
It was Travis and me. And somehow, even I couldn’t believe that we were over. A huge part of me still stared at my phone or my door wistfully. Hoping that it would ring or somebody would knock and it would be him. We didn’t really have to work things out. I just hoped we could talk to each other—didn’t matter if we’re yelling or not. I wished I could open him up. I wished he would just tell me what he felt—didn’t matter if I felt insulted or hurt. I wished he would trust me to be strong or mature enough to hear the words he wanted to say.
Green.
Below the black swirls, I started a pattern in green, dark-hued at first, and then slowly brightening up as I progressed away from the dark colors. I smiled a little bit because the pattern reminded me so much of myself. I had come out of the black hole. The first months were really tough. I had lost count of the number of times I’d attempted to see a shrink just to get me out of my misery. But now, it was slowly progressing. Things were getting lighter and lighter.
I tried to stand on my own. For the first time in my life, I lived without the shadow of my guardian angel. I walked the streets knowing that I could get mugged or murdered, and no one would come to my rescue. No eyes were following me wherever I went, making sure I was safe.
Once in a while, I would dream about making love to Travis. It was as wonderful as the real thing. My body still craved him, still missed him. But my heart was too broken to hope that we could be together again.
When my physical wounds had healed, I began dancing again. I did it slowly at first. But it felt good, losing all my worries in the beat of the music, forgetting how to think and feel…just allowing my body to move.
I was starting to be strong on my own. I was dead scared at first. Because after Tom died, I was never on my own. Travis was always there. I could just be selfish and carefree. And he would always be there to pick me up.
I still couldn’t believe what Travis had done to me. My family thought that the lost baby had taken a toll on our marriage. I didn’t tell anybody, except for Sarah, the real reason why Travis and I had drifted apart. I couldn’t. No matter what he did, I couldn’t bear for my friends and family to hate him and think of him as a beast…because even I found it so hard to believe, even then. I still couldn’t accept that the Travis who protected me with his life had taken advantage of me when I was too weak to defend myself.
Yellow.
I smudged an adequate amount of yellow on after the greens. It provided a lighter tone to my painting, which used to be so dark and sad.
I stared back at the canvas. It was a beautiful combination of black, blue, purple, red, green, and a touch of yellow. Tears rolled down my cheeks. All the other colors, except for yellow, represented a phase in my life that had lasted for the past couple of months. I felt like every dark and sad emotion I had ever felt was in that painting.
And then the yellow added so much brightness to the bleak mood that the painting had originally conveyed. I guessed that was my challenge now. To find the source of light that would give me hope…a hope that I could still find happiness in spite of losing the things that mattered most to me. The hope that I would still be able to smile, in spite of losing the one person whom I considered to be…my life.