The Witness
Painted April 17, 2023
A timestamp. Not a Breakthrough.
I stayed home that day.
I felt off, so off that I thought maybe drawing could pull me out of it.
I wasn’t calling it anemia yet. I didn’t even know something was wrong.
I thought it was depression. Or burnout. Or maybe just life catching up with me.
So I sat down and painted this.
Six hours.
No flow, just fight.
I obsessed over tiny details, refined things that didn’t matter, hoping that focus would bring me back to myself.
It wasn’t cathartic.
It was painful.
By the end, I felt worse—exhausted, disconnected, hollowed out.
Ten days later, I was in Disneyland.
It felt like being a stranger at a birthday party.
Even there, magic didn’t exist.
Funny, I didn’t really look at this piece until recently.
Now I see struggle.
A woman in chaos. Made up like a clown. Not by choice, but by circumstance.
She’s not happy. But she wears it anyway.
She’s not asking for help. She already knows there’s none to give.
It’s not sadness. It’s acceptance.
But she’s also a witness.
She was watching me die.
Through her creation, she captured what I couldn’t explain.
She held onto something I was losing.
Maybe the last bit of magic I had.
I didn’t remember placing that Mickey in the painting.
But of course I did.
Even in decline I was still leaving breadcrumbs of myself.
I haven’t created anything like this since.
And maybe I won’t again.
But I don’t think this piece was meant to lift me.
It was meant to stay with me.
This isn’t a breakthrough.
It’s not recovery.
It’s a timestamp.
A relic.
A witness.
Only ten signed prints of this piece were ever made.
One remains.
It’s not for sale—yet.