I was a talented artist, borderline Perfectionist. Even My models had to be perfect. I mean not nearly perfect, but flawless. In my work and world, everything had to be especially suitable to my taste. Alas this time I choose my fiancé. I was meticulous about painting. All the models and beauties that I have ever painted have been lissome and limber. I had to mend the way she looked, or so I thought.
I forced her to skip meals so she could keep her fistic, take weight loss pills to remove her stomach. When she ate, I called her a “pig”. I made her feel self-conscious. With every portion of food she ate, the chastisement from me was not worth it. I brutally battered her mind and body. It seemed that with every stroke of my brush, her health withered away before my eyes.

It did not take long for her to grow ill. She began purging after every meal, and I let her. I wanted a perfect painting I did not care whether she got ill; I just wanted a masterpiece. Now her bones, more defined than ever pierced out of her chest like a xylophone. Her eyes fell into her head, and were unenlightened, and it was easy to tell she was in pain.

She started talking to me about being sick, but I did not listen. She took herself to a physician. The doctor said, “You are majorly under weight. “ He proscribed protein drink and advised her to eat more than one thing a day. She could not look up into the doctor’s face. She was thinking about the painting. I do not know if she thought she owed me something, but her mind was just as engulfed by the painting as mine was. The stern look on the doctor’s face and his voice were not lighthearted. He said, “If you don’t start eating you may die.”

She could not do it her mind took over she had to force the food down her thought, but it came right back up. I watched her suffer; I watched her cry, but the distress she was in meant nothing to me. I did not care that she was sick I just wanted to finish my painting. Then while in my studio I realized how sick she really was. I had just started putting the auburn into her hair on my canvas when she collapsed. I picked her up off the hard wood floor. Her bones felt vulnerable; I thought that one grasp of her already wounded would damage her vitamin-deprived bones. In my arms, you could hear her gasping for life. The only thing that went through my mind was she is dying.

It had been two weeks and she still had not awakened from her coma. I was slowly losing hope. With every day that passed her breathing declined. I stood over her bed praying. I did not know whom I was praying to but I was praying for her, for hope, and for a future. Nevertheless, as I muttered words to a seemingly useless god her heart stopped and the buzz of her machined echoed through the empty hospital halls.
I knelt down at my fiancés grave. I was staring at her name, my tears pouring into the engraved names in the polished rocks. I whisper her name in the cold breeze, “Elizabeth” my voice being carried away into the dark somber night. I could not help but feel it was my fault she was gone, but I guess in many ways it was.

Sitting under the maple tree, I was pondering the way I treated her. I called her names made her feel inferior. I was blind to just how beautiful she was. I wanted perfection from someone already perfect. Painting her was my dream. I painted her, but it was like painting her death.