My life has always been a blank canvas, and my mind has always been a pallet of paint. At first, I tried to finger paint. Tried to find meaning and passion in things everyone else cared about, not what I cared about. I always knew I needed to find that paint brush to truly convey my feelings onto the canvas. At age ten, I found my first paint brush. After I found my first, I discovered that they were everywhere. It started with reading, carrying on to fanfiction, to writing, to clarinet, to music, to history, to Broadway, to social issues. Suddenly I had my brushes and was creating a beautiful piece of art that I could call my life.

It only took a few days after finding my first paint brush for people to realize that I had started on an amazing journey of finally becoming who I really was, not who they wanted me to be. Everyone started attacking what brushes I had chosen to pick up. It made me want to dip a finger in the white paint and smear it all over my canvas, giving myself no option but to start over.

The great thing about myself was, I never actually painted over my canvas as I had threatened to do. I knew that in order to be happy in life, I had to stick with the passions that I enjoyed, not the ones everyone forced upon me. Keeping everything the way I liked it caused me to lose a lot of friends. They didn’t care how much I loved something if they didn’t like it, simply because they were selfish people who dragged me down in life.

Anytime I pick up a new paint brush, I do my best to ignore the negativity people send my way. But sometimes, it gets to be too much. In the times when I doubt myself my mind will often go back to the comments from the people who matter the most. “You can’t read that, you’re not advanced enough.” and “Honestly, the fact that you were always talking about it made me hate you. Like, I didn’t even want to be near you.” can seem harmless when you say them. In reality, they can be the things that kill people the most.

Going through the struggles of people hating me because of a book I read is not fun, but it’s life. People come and go but I will always have myself. If I spend my whole life trying to please people who won’t be with me forever, what will I have left when they’re gone? A new blank canvas that will take time to repaint.