Advanced Essay #1: Picture Perfect

Introduction// My goal for this paper was to let people get a glimpse of what my life is like behind closed doors. Honestly, I put up a strong front and wall towards people in order for them to think I’m strong and sometimes that can come off pretty bad. Although I am somewhat of a tough character, I still do have certain weak spots just like everyone else. I am very proud of being able to be very descriptive in certain parts of this essay and that’s something that I normally really struggle with when it comes to essays. Of course there’s room for improvement and I think I could’ve improved my conclusion paragraph but I tried to tie it all back to my first memory and description of the painting in my dining room and I think I was able to do that along with bigger idea coming across.

There’s this picture in my dining room. It hovers over the dining table like my guardian angel. It captivates my eyes due to its assortment of large and small circles of different colors and textures. The background of the picture is something quite unique. Colors collide together beautifully down the green, red and yellow ombre backdrop. The texture of the background reminds me of paint brush strokes, streaky but beautiful. The top of the picture is a grass green and like love at first sight it falls romantically into a goldish yellow. Between that and the next two colors, resides a gray area something that resembles what we all have in life. A moment that does not really seem to fit, but at times it may move you into something a thousand times better. That vivid brown color twisted the gray area into a moment I fell in love with. Possibly the best transition of the entire picture or maybe of my entire life. There’s a big white circle on top of that grassy green tone I mentioned, I would say it is a perfect circle but life can never be too perfect and on the outside of this circle comes a white orbit facing forward around it. Like impulsive moments in my life, this picture is filled with spontaneous circles. Varying from quarter sized orange and red circles that reminds me of Mars, to that big white circle with another orbit that reminds me of Pluto.

I am way too familiar with the five senses associated with a broken heart, or maybe I should say the senses acquired to a heart break. It sounds like occasional whimpers, sniffles and sobbing. It tastes like sea salt, cotton and strawberry ice cream. It looks like eyelids forced shut and dried patches on my brown skin. It feels like feathery pillows and warm cozy blankets. It smells like fresh perfume or old cologne. As I sit at my table and reminisce about my past, my eyes become engulfed into a blank google document and keys that varied from alphabetical to numerical order. I remember this day just like it was yesterday.

The laminated faux cherry wood dining set pushed out into the middle of my dining room. Hanging above it was a crystal chandelier, a little dusty but the reflection from the shallow jewels still relayed the dark brown reflection of your eyes. The table we sat at was covered in postal mail of different sorts. Postal stamps plastered onto envelopes, package tape ripped off of brown cardboard boxes but for some reason the clutter did not seem to bother you. What your eyes really laid on was the steaming hot, shrimp alfredo my mother made for us. The linguini noodles were smothered in a white sauce topped with speckles of paprika, pepper, salt and garlic powder. I watched as you sniffled in the steam and various aromas that arose. The way you clutched my forest green ceramic plates as you engulfed the food with that metal 4 armed fork let me know, you enjoyed every bit of the meal. That made me smile inside. I know you’re a keeper if you happen to like mothers food. In that time, I caught myself occasionally staring at that picture. The various large and small circles captivated me, they sort of resembled my pupils. The pupils you always seemed to compliment that made me blush uncontrollably. After eating, you had to go home but your memory did not leave. Although I would never see you again, I saw some of you in the sweat stain you left on the burgundy leather chair cushions. I saw your lip print on the glass cup you drank from and that never left. Damn Finish ™ for not getting the dishes as clean as they promised. Now I will always see you in that picture, at my dining room table and as a faint memory in the back of my head.

I wish there were actual memory erasers, you know from Men in Black. Your presence would be here and then gone in an instant. But, of course my long spiral road of heartbreak just doesn’t end there. There’s always one thing after another, just like a broken record of vocals. The same lyric playing over and over and over and over and over and over and ov- you get it right? Similar to what I’m dealing with. A never ending, record repeating, late night assortment of blues.

The morning blue jays arose and sung a song while I stared at the window behind my bed and admired the blooming spring flowers and healthy green trees. These trees always scared me on windy nights because I thought the tree would fall over. As the day came to an end , and the crickets came out to play, I saddened at the next saga of events. A notification tab popped up onto my phone screen and what I saw next made my mouth drop completely to the floor. “He broke up with me.” Tears welled up into my eyes, slowly finding their way into the creases beside my mouth. I tasted the salty liquid on my taste buds as my body started to become numb. I slowly read the message making sure I caught every detail within the long cold hearted paragraph. “This just isn’t working out.” Words screamed in exhaustion throughout my head, my heart cringed at the beating it would be taking yet again. “After all I’ve told him, after all we’ve been through?” 4 walls began to close in on me, dry patches stained my cheeks and my body began to shake uncontrollably. Should I leave it on read and not respond? Should I convince him to stay with me? I couldn’t really seem to come up with an answer. The more I read the message, the more questions I had. Is this all my life will ever be? Was there someone else? Were you not happy? Am I just not good enough?

My story is a prime example of transition. Alike the gray area in the painting that hangs faithfully above the dining table in my dining room, my life became swiveled and swirled into that vivid brown closely related to the swivels and swirls in that soft serve ice cream cone from the Mr.Softee truck. So effortlessly did that brown take full control of the car I had slowly but surely lost control of. After a full year of total unhappiness and complete betrayal left and right I realized this was all a test. A test to see how much I could take. It felt as if I took this test about 50 times, each time being labeled a different type. My first trial, I was to weak to realize the true lies. My second trial I was stable, starting to understand my mistakes but still blinded by the black veil of “love”. My last and final trial I was strong. Realizing that I am worth an entire picture of words. I am a beautiful little 15 year old black girl, who will be 16 in two months, whose hair will never get curly in the water, a picky eater who hates when their food touches but loves the mixture of vegetables and meat in beef stew. I am a little black girl who is a little shy and awkward around new people but able to be outspoken and loud when it comes to expressing her thoughts. I am a teenager who has experienced the devastation of heartbreak at a young age, I am a teenager still learning to fight for true love. I am still in the process of finding myself. But, most importantly. I am changed and I am me.