Black Hair Dye, a Blank Canvas, and a Woman in Hiding

When I first spotted a single gray hair on my head, I was 21 years old. Immediately, I rushed to the store to grab a box dye that would wipe away its existence after 30 minutes of setting. It was a quick fix, a way to wash away the signs that I was stressing myself out.

Ultimately, that one gray hair was a physical sign of my weariness.

Years of working full time and personal problems had already come for my darkened forest of black hues within all that long straight hair; a cue of biological decay that scared me.

Aging meant the future, something I was unaware of. I lived in time slots of changing emotions, the weight of my mental illnesses, and recoiling to a more isolated life. College was a time where I was faced with the full blunt force of my earlier trauma that I had hidden away and neatly packed into an 18 year olds brain. But when I reached my 20s, there was no room to bottle up what I had been hiding about my troubles.

In the walls of my tiny apartment, the true loneliness I felt came out in hot tears each night around 9 pm. Low income was written all over the bills piling up in my mailbox, so much so, that I wanted to throw away the key. I was grappling with my identity, my familial pain, and how I could do this “life thing” all by myself. For months on end during each semester, I was endlessly searching for any sort of affection and love from the world. I ended up trying to find it in men who could never provide that, and it hurt me. So many trial and errors happened in passing friendships, in job searches, and comparing my life to everyone else’s.

Ultimately, my early twenties and those boxes of black hair dye Id use to hide the gray changed me.

It was a time where my financial status, beliefs, outward identity, uncovered emotions, and a desire for love came hurling towards me all at once. I didn’t know how to show my authentic self without all the trauma involved, or where to begin when it came to truly taking care of my personhood.

That is, until I went to blick art supplies on State St. one day after class.

I was browsing the aisles, aimlessly searching for some paints for a separate project when I saw how cheap the basic sets of canvases were. I picked up a pack, headed home, and began to think about creating a new hobby for myself. During this period in my life, I was insecure about my art, my abilities, and even my motivation to be a part of a functioning society. It scared me to really show myself through not only poetry, but through the paint I poured into the crevices of a blank canvas.

First the black hair dye concealed me, and now the canvas diluted my fears.

With a deep breath, one day I began to sketch and paint. Each stroke of the brush released emotion and a consistent method of peaceful focusing that I became glued to the process of art making.

My true self came through, not only in words, but in colors. The shadow that always tagged along in my every step had stopped to look over my shoulder, as I put my depression on pause for a few moments to begin a new art piece.

For me, I think that my authentic self shined its brightest when I did my first commission. Even though I was terrified of what the customer would think about my work, they looked at it with beaming eyes. I had not expected a reaction like that to happen to me, so receiving a comment about how lovely they looked in their self portrait made me feel like I was showing myself for who I wanted to be. Most importantly, I was finally being who I truly was after spending years hidden amidst the 9-5 class and work schedule, chaos of emotions, and trauma that wasn’t linear.

Seeing how I could connect with others, and let go of those walls I had created around myself, is when I truly began to see who I was.

Now a days, I use art as a simplistic outlet for curbing my anxiety and sadness on its worst days. For the days where I feel grief, I have turned to art as those years of healing after the loss.