my portrait.

Here's one of my favorite conversation starters: I own an oil portrait of me painted by my ex-boyfriend... given to me nearly a year after we broke up.

Allow me to explain.

When I began college, I was an 18-year-old who had never had a boyfriend. I'd kissed a couple of duds, but that was it for my romantic life. You know how John Cusak in High Fidelity was concerned about dying alone at age 27, and he knew 27 was too young for that? At 17, I was already convinced I'd die alone.

Then college came along.

I was not at all used to boys liking me, but they did. It was weird and awesome. I had kind of an ugly ducking thing going on up until the very beginning of my senior year of high school when I started to take more an interest in how I looked. Apparently I looked like someone the college boys might like.

Me about a month before college. This was during
the “very serious artsy photograph” time of my life.

Here's what I didn't yet know: you don't want ALL boys to like you. Some boys are bad for you.

Enter: the Tormented Artist.

It was April 2006, and I got a message on Facebook (back when it was just for college students) from him. I had never met him, but I'd seen him around campus. It said something to the effect of "you seem cool; can we hang out sometime?" 

After nearly nine months of college douche dudes, I still hadn't learned my lesson. I said sure, and we met up. I really liked him at first. He had great taste in movies, and he opened the door to all sorts of fantastic music. He was also a talented artist, which I found impressive and fascinating. We started officially dating that June - my very first boyfriend. (I was also his first girlfriend.)

The summer was great, as we were dating long distance. Once school began, things went south pretty fast. He had severe untreated depression, which I (a naive 19-year-old) was not equipped to deal with. He also spent a week in a hospital and about a month out of school late September/early October. When he returned, he expected me to spend every spare moment with him. For a while, I did. He skipped his classes and urged me to do the same. (I didn’t, but my grades suffered from the stress.) I missed out on weeks of gorgeous fall weather, shuttered in his room and barely seeing the light of day.

Halloween finally broke me out of my prison. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I spent the days around Halloween with friends. The Tormented Artist was incensed, accusing me of not caring about him and his well being. That line had worked before, but not for Halloween.

Things continued to deteriorate between us as the school year wore on. He made me cry on my 20th birthday. He said things I would later recognize as emotionally abusive. He manipulated and demeaned - one such occasion culminated in a fight on live radio. (We DJd a show together on the college radio station. It was awful. Our only listeners were my parents, who really enjoyed hearing this spat on air.)

My parents thought I should break up with him. My friends thought I should break up with him. It took me until July - just over a year of dating - to actually break up with him. A year of isolation and cruel comments had beat me down.

But then: I was free.

The next two years of college were some of the best years of my life. I started a double major in English and my newly discovered love, art history. I killed it in both disciplines. I went on a jazz band trip to New Orleans. I made friends that I still have today. I started dating the man I would marry.

Life was good.

In April of my junior year, the Tormented Artist was a senior. I managed to avoid him for most of that year, besides some notes exchanged in school PO boxes asking for my books and DVDs back. (I never got them back.) 

But one day, I got a note in the box saying I had a package. I wasn’t expecting anything, so I didn’t have a clue what I was in for.

I turned in my slip at the post office window and waited. The lady behind the counter reappeared with a funny look on her face… and a giant canvas. 

The color drained from my face.  

It was a portrait of me.

By the Tormented Artist.

The portrait made me look dead. My skin was a sallow whitish green, and the background was bleak. It lined up exactly with the Tormented Artist’s style: muddy and devoid of joy.

Here it is again for good measure.

The worst part?

The school day wasn’t over, so I had to haul that painting along with me to my last class.

And I had ridden my bike that day.

I had to ask my current boyfriend (who had driven to campus) to transport the big-ass painting from my ex-boyfriend.

James - the boyfriend - laughed until he cried.

That portrait is hanging in my parents’ house and has been since 2008. (It’s on the upper level where no one really goes except overnight guests. It’s too creepy to hang on the main level for the general public.) No one has the heart to throw it away, but no one really wants to look at it either. 

In every bad situation, one is supposed to be able to find the silver lining. One silver lining of this relationship manifested in a spooky portrait that in turn is a great story.

My relationship with the Tormented Artist lasted just over a year, but the Dead Calla portrait will last forever.