Art helped me move when I didn’t know how to.
Growing up, I didn’t have a talent for words. I couldn’t string together a sentence without fumbling over my words with a stutter stemming from my lack of confidence. I wasn’t confident in much because how could I say I was confident if I couldn’t even properly express what I did best? It's like the lump in my throat would move to my chest as I could never say what needed to be said. It was like a part of me was dead. Mouth sowed shut. I was no one.
That was until my mother, the creator of my heart, gave me something for a fresh start. Hooked on Phonics made me a phoenix in the dark to rise with words that could not only be heard but read. My words were spoken as they were written in books. I finally had a voice. I had a choice to speak if I wanted to. I was more than just a shell containing thoughts I thought lost.
As I got older, my world grew, and my words expanded. Each term I learned became a part of my mind, and I continued to find somewhere for these phrases to uncomplicate this mind of mine where thoughts of myself didn’t always shine. Even as I continued to grow, my hopes continued to linger in limbo on what I could do…what I could be. I couldn’t see what my friends, family, or God saw in me. I was a vampire in the mirror as my heart bled on the floor. I couldn’t see myself anymore.
As time passed, so did this lie. Continuing to eat away at all the words I had to say. But then I discovered Langston. “A Dream Deferred” gave birth to the lost hues where only blues lived. Washing away the flames in myself, I was now an ocean. Floating in a space that no longer had me bracing myself for what came next in a sentence because I wrote it truthfully. Honestly, finding the art I read gave me more than the words I said. I could write beautifully. Poetically.
Art healed me. It gave me something more. More than what I could have ever hoped for.
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