Painting Grapes

I remember in sixth grade when I found out her parents had gotten divorced. She has been my friend since I was about 3, we used to go to the same church and my mother taught the preschool there, so her and I had grown up together. Her family had always seemed like the ideal family. Asian dad, white mom, one daughter, one son, perfect straight A students, mom was the homecoming queen and voted most likely to succeed her senior year, they all went to church every Sunday. To the naked eye, they were what every family wanted to be. What my family had wanted to be.

In sixth grade, she told me she was getting free lunches, and it didn't seem to click in my head why she would get a free lunch, both her parents were employed and they lived in a nice house. I asked her why and she explained to me that since the divorce, she had been put on her mom's income early, which qualified her for free lunch. I was shocked to see that such a perfect American  dream had sunk.

Throughout middle school, we had transferred to separate schools for seventh and eighth grade, and were then reunited once in high school. We would usually correspond between letters and emails, and we would send each other copies of our poetry, comparing and contrasting, ripping each other to shreds and praising each other.

In high school, she always wore sweatshirts everyday and underneath she always had a camisole. One day we went out on a lunch date together, but it was too hot for a sweatshirt, but instead of wearing a tank top, she said she 'didn't want to just have bare shoulders' so she borrowed one of my long sleeved fishnet shirts to wear underneath her tank top. She borrowed in again when she wore her short sleeved dress in the talent show to recite poetry and she then hennaed every inch of her arms so anything on then was no longer visible.

The summer before the previous once, I had gone swimming with her in the river and then spent the night at her house, leaving her in a tank top, the entire time. I noticed thick, white, straight lines down each of her arms, they looked like mine, but instead of the way mine blend in with my porcelain complexion, they completely stuck out against her dark skin. I never asked her about them, but later that night when i saw her take a pill for bipolar medication, I felt the need to ask her about that.

One day I was sitting in her kitchen eating, and I noticed all the walls in the kitchen/dining room  were decorated with grape vines. The vines went down and around every wall and there must have been tens of thousands on grapes on them. I asked her mom if it had been the type of stick on application that one buys at a Home Depot and then it looks exactly like paint and she said "The vines were." So, I asked how the grapes were done and she said "I painted each grape separately myself. I went through a time in my life, and to get through it, painting grapes became therapeutic for me."

So, I guess the point of this whole recollection, is I guess that's what I'm doing right now. Group therapy, workbooks, three new prescriptions, counseling, etc. I'm painting grapes. It's going to be boring as fuck at some points, and it's gonna take a long ass time. There are some points where it's gonna be kind of fun, and there are some points I'm just gonna want to give up, because it's goddamn tedious. But once I'm done, I can look at the walls around me and know that it's finally over. That I made something beautiful and it truly didn't take forever to fix it. So, for the time being, I'm painting grapes right now, but I know there is a finish line and in the end it will all be worth it.