White Canvass

It's extremely funny.

Today was finally day she left me. I never thought she'd do it, as she'd always turned around and come back. We'd always fight, sometimes it was playful, sometimes it was serious, but we always ended up forgiving each other before the night passes.

Today came as a complete surprise. Truly, it was. For the first time, I really felt that she was never gonna come back, that I'm never gonna see her again. That all of those times we loved, and fought, and cried, and fought and loved again, was all for naught.

You see, she left me because I did it. She didn't know I did it, and I had always tried to keep it from her. I smoked. None of my friends knew, nobody else did. I used to pretend getting bothered by the wafts of smoke that drifted to my direction, and I never smoked in a group. The temptation is really hard to resist, I tell you. Then I'd have those times when it's just me on a beach (I lived on a coastal town), dark at night, smoking a lonely cig, and leave -- bringing with me the single butt that I'd keep to throw to the trash.

The thing is, I didn't know how to smoke. Not until two years ago did I realize that you actually had to breathe in to put the smoke into your lungs before exhaling. I've always only placed them on my mouth before blowing them out. That's why my friends laugh at me when I smoke--that's why I kept it a secret.

Today a friend passed me a box of expensive smokes. They were made from korea apparently, and were thinner than usual. No harming in popping one in my mouth for once; I thought. The cool mint flavor contradicted the hot smoke that came with it. I lighted the cig, and I looked at her.

We were in a long-distance relationship, she lived on an island that wasn't far at all, in fact, it was only a two-hour ride to get there, if you had the money. But I didn't so trips to her were expensive as heck. She was on the phone looking at me when I looked at her. I wanted to see how she would react, would she have accepted me, when she finds out that I smoke? Would she forgive me for a flaw that I'm about to show her? Would she share my secret, and keep it as if it was her own?

I was wrong. The second she saw the stick in my mouth, the call ended. The message app was blocked, and I was unable to call. I lost it. Everything. My dream, my wish, my future. She was gone.

I--no, not just I, you, my dear sweet reader, you, me, everyone-- we're all painters. Painters of our own lives. Our choices are like the colors of an artist's palette, and the colors we choose to paint on our life-- which is our canvass-- are like the actions we choose to make, and the image that we produce is what other people see in us. Some people have clean, white canvasses, others are deep red, and chaotic, others are blue and calm. Others make mistakes and tend to wipe it off other people--tainting their paintings and turning their life a living hell. Well I-- I had a painting; a visualization of my painting -- the life that I wanted to make, the picture that I wanted to see, was with her. It took a single stick of cigarette to wipe all the years of hard work I've put it into a painting. The single stroke of paint I made ruined the picture and now the girl is gone.

And once again, I'm left with a white canvass.