Daniel stood at the entrance to the art supply store with his hand on the door handle. It had taken him three weeks to get here.
Not three weeks of planning. Three weeks of driving past and not stopping, of adding it to his to-do list and moving it to the next day, of sitting in the car park for a few minutes and then starting the engine again. The decision to stop had been so gradual that he hadn't noticed making it. The decision to come back was proving to be exactly as hard.
The last time he'd bought paints was almost three years ago. He had been working on a series he cared about — large canvases, a specific quality of light he'd been trying to get right for months. His partner at the time had called his work "therapeutic." She said it warmly, with affection, as you might say it about a hobby that helped someone manage their anxiety. He had heard it differently.
"Therapeutic" was a ceiling. It meant: this is the extent of what this is. It meant: I see what you're doing here, and I know what it is, and it isn't what you think it is.
She had never said he should stop. She had just given his work a category — and the category was smaller than the work. He had given away his studio space when they moved in together. He had packed his paints into a box. The unfinished canvas was still against the wall in the spare room. He had stopped seeing it the way you stop seeing something you live with.
What about you?
Is there something you stopped doing — a practice, a creative pursuit, something that was genuinely yours — because someone's words or attitude made it feel smaller than it was?
He pushed the door open. The bell above it rang once. The smell of linseed oil hit him immediately — dense and particular, a smell that existed nowhere else — and he was surprised by how much he felt. Not nostalgia exactly. More like recognition. His body knew this place.
He walked through the brushes, the canvases, the racks of pigment. He picked things up and put them down. He stood in front of a range of oils for a long time, not yet deciding, just being in proximity to the decision.
He had not become a worse painter in three years. He had just been someone who didn't paint, because it had been made to seem like the kind of thing a person either grew out of or admitted to. He had admitted to it. He had let the admission stand.
He took a basket from the end of the aisle. He began to fill it. He chose carefully, the way you choose things you're going to use.
Nothing was resolved. The unfinished canvas was still against the wall. The three years were still three years. But he was inside the shop, holding a basket, and that was further than he had been yesterday. Some things start with a single step through a door and nothing more, and the doing of it is what makes the next step possible.
What about you?
Have you taken a first step back toward something that was taken or diminished — and felt the weight of how long you'd been away?