As a pencil artist I am pretty intentional. Almost like every line I draw is a reflection of the precision of my thought process. I draw a lot of different things, but not in their natural form. All my work is almost a sarcastic contempt of the vanity of existence. I remember this one time in my final exam at uni I drew a very dark rainbow. The very fact that it had no colour made my supervisor extremely furious. He said my rainbow had neither character nor life, and gave me a fail. He was wrong. Just as everyone else that looks at my work seems to be wrong.
My drawing may not have had the cliche red to violet spectrum of colours of a rainbow that everyone is comfortable seeing but the different shades of black and grey I chose had a life of their own. Dark maybe, but it certainly had character. I hate how the world prefers to view the brighter version of existence that anyone who confronts the contrast is regarded a divergent. The arrogant type, not the ones you want to have in society. For that I have always felt that I have no place in the world and my work doesn’t seek to find relevance in a world that doesn’t accommodate me.
I am 19. No girlfriend, no children and pretty much no family. My mum overdosed when I was 10 and my dad jumped in-front of a speeding train when I was 13. She had got pregnant with me at a very young age and in fear of my mum’s intolerant pastor parents, eloped and started a new life in the big city. With no education or vocational skills, city life was a slap in the face for my parents. My dad started drinking and sleeping out, and bashing my mother for asking him too many questions when he came back. She had no right apparently, to question where he went to distract himself from the unnecessary strain of raising a family on his own at the age of 19. Although too young to comprehend, the transition from a young couple drowning in unreserved love to a cold, hanging on straws relationship was apparent to a four-year-old me.
My father taught me to hate my mother. For denying him and myself a dignified life by spreading her legs too early in her life. I didn’t understand what that meant but that’s what I I sang to everyone who bothered to listen to a child spit hate on the woman who fought tooth and nail to get him school fees when my drunkard of a father spent his wages in alcohol and women. Unfortunately for me, that grew with me. Hate is something I dish to anyone that does me good, almost like I don’t need their help, love, or presence. Might explain why I have no friends or family. I never was taught how to keep them.
I lost my train of thought, where was I?
I started drawing at a very young age. A lot of my drawings were representations of my home. The hate, hurt, pain, poverty, physical abuse and intolerance that defined our lives. My dad’s voice was authority and my mum, her opinion was even more inferior to mine. My dad stepped over her and that was just the normal I grew up in. When I turned 10 my mother got pregnant. I have never seen someone get beaten as much as she was bashed the day she told my father the news. According to my dad, she was a reckless, good for nothing tramp who could not use her common sense to see that we could not afford another baby. I have never cried as much as I did that day. When my dad found me crouched under the kitchen table, he beat me too. For sympathising with my reckless mother. What happened two hours later remains a point of darkness for me. My father came home in a good mood, almost like nothing had happened. Cooked dinner for the first time since they had moved into the city and had my mum and I eat and dance with him, in our pains. Before bed, he told me to take a special drink to my mother as an apology from him for acting like a nuisance. I was so happy to hear him want to fix things that I ran to my mother and told her everything was fine. The fear in her eyes when my father stood in the door watching her drink confused me. Even more his aggressive ‘NO’ when she tried to give me a sip.
When the police came to arrest my mother, she had been due for discharge at the hospital.
The one week she had spent recovering from the poison that my dad had forced her to drink and the reality of an aborted child had reduced her weight by half. She was a skeleton. I had drawn a picture of my baby brother for her, and couldn’t wait to go home with her so she could see it. I had planned to undo the hate I had served her, and the lifeless woman that left the hospital in handcuffs is the only memory of my mother that remains in my scarred mind. Abortion was a big crime in my country, and my father set my mother up knowing fully well that no-one would listen to her, or me. Her suicide in custody three days later cleansed my father even further. My mother went down as a selfish woman who couldn’t think of anyone but herself. My dark rainbow was the life and character of my mother. A beautiful, colourful woman who never was seen for what she was. My drawings are a burnt offering to my mother. A plea for forgiveness. I distort all the beautiful things about me and the life around me as I don’t deserve to be seen as beautiful, when my mother never got the chance to be seen for her authentic beauty.
Right now, I am drawing my suicide. A picture of how I will look when I cross over to join my mother.
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