A tabby, to be specific. Something about their sleek lines made it seem like they had secret powers, and for a girl with no siblings—yet—it seemed like the kind of thing that would give me a cool gang of feline friends.
At six, I wanted to be Joyce, the lady at my mom’s favorite supermarket who sat by the candy rack and scanned people’s groceries. I was convinced she snuck Twix bars when no one was watching, and I didn’t think she had to listen to a baby cry all day like I did. My sister Emily had just landed in the nest, and man, she was an annoying little bird.
By the time I turned seven, I’d moved on from admiring Joyce’s independent lifestyle to thinking babies were kind of cute after all. Emily was learning all sorts of new things, and I loved lording over her and playing teacher. Maybe that was my destiny.
It wasn’t until I was eight, however, that I found my true calling—art.
Painting, to be exact.
Secret Twix were great and all, but they couldn’t let the pressure of emotion out of my soul or give me a sense of purpose I’d never felt before. With every stroke of the paintbrush, I knew more and more—I wanted to be an artist. Not for work or for pleasure or anything with a defined set of lines. I wanted to smear my passion outside of them—to live and breathe the one thing that made it feel like I didn’t need a street gang of cats to back me up.
So, I did.
From then on, for the last ten years, I’ve almost always had a paintbrush in my hands or a sketchbook in my lap. I’ve dared to dream of big things, worked toward them endlessly, and now, I’m seeing the fruits of all of my dedication realized.
Today is my first day at Columbia University as an art major.
I feel great. Accomplished. Proud. And I also feel the closest I’ve felt to winding up the Inspector Gadget phone and getting the leader of the Cat Crips on the line since I was four years old.
I need street-tough stray kittens, and I need them now.
I know the whole reason I’m standing here on the precipice of something new and terrifying is because my art is worthy. It got me into Columbia.
But it’s not uncommon for creative personalities to struggle with self-deprecation.
Take van Gogh, for example. The man cut off his freaking ear.
I don’t think that was the result of internal criticism, but it certainly proves that every artist has their struggles, and I can’t think of a better example.
Probably because most artists internalize any toxic emotions about their craft until their organs rot rather than acknowledge that the thing that sustains them is also slowly killing them because there’s so much pressure to do better and be better with every creation.
I can totally imagine being van Gogh, living in poverty all his life while struggling to connect his art with the masses and finally just thinking, “Fuck it. I’m cutting off my ear.”
And then he freaking dies, and that’s when everyone comprehends how great he is.
No doubt, I have to get over my proverbial stage fright because I’d say I’m getting the better end of the struggle deal. I have both of my ears, and Columbia, by accepting me for admission, has acknowledged my work well before I bite the big one.
I open the last moving box and pull out a plethora of randomness—half-filled sketchbooks, a coffee cup full of pens, paintbrushes, a few blank canvases, picture frames filled with photos of my parents and my two younger sisters, Kate and Emily, a bag of assorted makeup that I’m pretty sure has reached its expiration date, and a pair of dusty old flip-flops that look like they’ve seen better days.
Truthfully, messy might as well be my middle name. I sit on the queen’s throne of “just toss all my crap into boxes and get this show on the road.”
I glance out the window of my new dorm room, and realization hits me—my life has seriously changed.
Yesterday, I moved from Lakewood, my small Vermont hometown, to one of the biggest, most populated cities in the world—New York. And tomorrow, I will officially be a freshman in college.
Instead of suburban landscapes, I see skyscrapers and taxicabs and sidewalks filled with people. Instead of one coffee shop within a twenty-mile radius, there’re at least twenty coffee