Great. I just pissed on the floor.

I’ve been standing in front of this painting for three days. Three goddamned days. My legs refuse to budge, and my mouth is so dry I’ve been dry-heaving every twenty minutes. Now my pajama bottoms are soaked, and my feet are freezing.

A woman with wine-dark lips stares back at me. Her black hair is a forest that fills the entire frame. Her gold eyes are fixed on me. The moment they opened, they held me captive.

My paintings aren’t like other paintings. People get rooted to the spot, which is why I admit patrons to the gallery one at a time. Usually, the effect lasts about ten minutes. Not three fucking days.

This is my masterpiece. My patrons know it. My critics (begrudgingly) know it. I know it, too.

But I can’t show it.

Not the way it is now.

I tried calling for help, but I can only manage a few dry croaks.

My assistant Brian’s been blowing up my phone all morning. Stupidly, I propped it up against an easel that’s just out of reach, so all I can do is stare at her.

This is the cost of finally getting her eyes right. I’ve painted those eyes hundreds of times over the last decade, but they’ve never hooked onto me. Not like this.

I thought if I could finally capture her eyes, I’d understand what happened between us. Now they’re holding me hostage.

Forty years ago, my best friend Valerie gave me something extraordinary. I could see things nobody else could, and I could capture them perfectly on canvas. She made me a master overnight.

The thing is,

I’m still not sure if it’s a gift or a curse. It depends on the day, I think.

Before the world knew her as a musical genius, Valerie was just… Valerie. As a child, she was more hair than girl. She spoke so softly, as if she were afraid of waking an ancient thing up.

And I was there the day the sunlight found her.

It was freezing inside the church. We were at choir practice. The priest shuffled around the pews, mumbling nonsense under his breath, while our classmates dared each other to blow out the vigil candles. I was tucked in a corner with Valerie. I smiled as I watched her coax a spider across the windowpane with the tip of her pinky. She was so easy to love.

A white flash by the altar caught my attention. I looked over and saw a patch of sunlight behaving strangely. It was growing and shrinking like a beating heart. I tried to call out to Valerie, but my throat wouldn’t cooperate. My legs ached as the muscles involuntarily clenched up.

I held my breath as the patch of sunlight stretched like an arrow and crept closer to us. I could hear Valerie, but I couldn’t make out the words.

My eyes followed the sunlight as it slid over my worn shoes.

Is it going to choose me?

The light fell on Valerie’s head. For a few seconds, I could have sworn I saw a crown of light.

Valerie shrieked and jumped back, her hands flying through her hair as if a bug had landed on her. Another flash and the light vanished.

The other girls were all standing there in silence when, with great comedic timing, one of them fell backwards and landed on the floor with a loud bang. While everyone rushed to help her, Valerie and I exchanged a quick look.

I wasn’t scared. Unmoored, maybe. Mostly I was disappointed that it chose someone else.

Valerie had loved music long before the light found her. She could talk endlessly about didgeridoos. But after that day at choir practice, it was as if she could hear things in music the rest of us couldn’t.

I’ll never forget when she phoned me at six in the morning, practically screaming into my ear.

“I’ve written 100 songs, Jane!”

“Val. You’re screaming.”

“I’m not screaming.”

“You’re screaming.”

My father picked up the phone in the next room. He was still working the morning frogs out of his throat.

“Valerie? It’s Mister Ward. Darling, can you please refrain from calling before seven?”

Valerie started singing in the third-floor bathroom at school, which only had two working toilets and the ugliest green walls I’d ever seen. Most girls went there to cry or smoke. Not Valerie. She went there to wield her voice and see what it could do. I’d stand outside the door and listen until the bell rang, sometimes missing an entire class.

I’d always wondered what the sirens sounded like to Odysseus. Yeah. She sounded something like that.

But her voice was dangerous too.

One day she caught me listening. I was crouched down behind the jutting wall. I don’t know what I was thinking; I was the tallest girl in class and couldn’t hide to save my life.

“GET OUT.”

The toilet seats rattled. Then her voice hit me in the chest, sending me backward into the tiled wall and knocking the wind out of me.

Valerie went pale, and slowly her mouth slid open.

“S-Sorry, Jane, I…”

I sucked in a breath, then exploded.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Val. You want to make music? You know you’ve actually got to SING in front of people, yeah?”

Her chin quivered. Then the tears started dripping from the corners of her eyes.

Oh.

“Val, wait…”

I reached for her wrist, but she pulled her hand away.

A few days later, I rang her up and apologized. She forgave me instantly, which made me feel even worse. I didn’t deserve her forgiveness. I still don’t.

We caught a movie that afternoon. For a while, we pretended as if nothing happened.

We didn’t really understand what happened at choir practice. Not really. Valerie thought she might have encountered her muse, but all we knew was that it changed the way she heard music and sang.

Then the sunlight started following Valerie everywhere, even indoors. We called it the Eye of Sauron. The Eye, for short. If she dozed off too long near an open window, she’d wake with blisters on her shoulders.

People began noticing her more and more. The most devoted ones usually hovered by her desk, eager to make her laugh or braid her hair.

The last time I phoned her, it was Christmas Eve, and I was drunk as a skunk. I complained about my job at the local drugstore and threatened to drop out of art school. All the same bullshit.

What I wanted to tell her was that I missed her and wanted her to come home.

I didn’t.

After that, I stopped calling.

A year later, we ended up at the same house party. It was the night before her first big tour, so the whole town was there. The music was so loud I thought the walls would come crashing down. All shrill guitars and pounding synths. My favorite. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, too. My chest tightened. I was ready to leave until a familiar laugh caught my attention.

I looked over, and what I saw reminded me of The Last Supper. Women stood like perfect statues to her right. Men in tailored suits clustered to her left. Everyone leaned towards Valerie.

Her ink-dark hair hung in big curls over her shoulders, wilder than I’ve ever seen. She used to hide them beneath enormous hats. My gaze lingered on her mouth. Her purple lipstick made her lips look almost wine-stained. When I realized I was openly staring, I forced my eyes to jump somewhere else.

Then I hid behind the closest houseplant for forty-five minutes.

Not my most dignified moment.

More than once, I noticed she tried to slip away from conversation. Every time she did, someone stopped her with another question or compliment.

Must be nice.

She was on the precipice of stardom, and I was a budding alcoholic who worked at a drugstore. Before I could sink deeper into that familiar ugliness, Valerie laughed again, only this time it was different. Higher-pitched.

She was scared.

A pair of long, tattooed arms had encircled her waist, and she was trying to untangle herself from them. I found myself unable to move. There was an awful whooshing sound in my ears. Nobody was helping her.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I crossed the room toward her. When my fingers closed gently around her wrist, I gasped a little. I had forgotten how small it was.

“Come here,” I whispered.

“Jane!” Valerie choked out.

I pulled her through the crowd. Valerie gripped my hand so tightly, my fingers started to ache. We went down two hallways and through a filthy-looking kitchen. Eventually we found a bathroom, but it took us a comically long time to get there.

“Is this a house or a labyrinth?” I laughed, a little breathlessly.

As soon as the bathroom door clicked shut, Valerie wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my shirt. At first I was too stunned to move. I’d never seen her like this before.

Pink candlelight washed over the bathroom. Candles were everywhere. They dotted the floor and lined the tub. They even crowded the closed toilet seat. There was something almost holy about it.

I hesitated before hugging her back. I had no idea what to do.

“This is definitely a fire hazard…” I murmured into her hair.

She let out a weak laugh. I looked down and noticed the dark circles under her eyes.

“You…look good,” she said awkwardly.

I smiled before I could stop myself.

“Well. You do, too, Miss Glitter,” I threw back at her.

“You didn’t mind when Bowie wore it.” Valerie grinned lopsidedly.

There was muffled laughter on the other side of the door.

I looked at her again, but this time I didn’t bother hiding it. Her floral shirt sat loosely on her. Almost floating. I loved the way her collarbones peeked out. God. I wished I had my sketchbook.

Valerie sat down on the floor, letting out a rush of air.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Not really,” Valerie admitted.

“You don’t have to perform for me, Val,” I said softly.

Valerie wrapped her arms around her knees and glanced up at me. The candlelight was bouncing off her glittery eyeshadow.

“I have such beauty inside me, Jane. It’s enormous. I think it’s going to swallow me whole one day.”

Valerie’s eyes filled with tears.

My heart ached. I sat down beside her.

“But it’s like a spotlight. Everyone can see me. Even when I don’t want them to.”

Suddenly, Valerie grabbed my hand and squeezed hard. Like, really hard.

“Ah! Val…” I complained.

Whipping my head around, I was surprised to find her face so close to mine. Her eyes burned.

“What are… you…” I managed.

I could feel Valerie’s breath on my lips.

“I’m sick of it…” she said softly.

I held my breath.

“I’m so fucking sick of it,” she whispered into my mouth.

Valerie hooked her fingers into my belt loops, yanked me closer, and kissed me like it was her last night on earth. I’d never had someone pour themselves into me like that before.

I didn’t know where to put my hands. I didn’t know a goddamned thing. All I knew was that her purple lipstick tasted faintly like cherries.

“Hey, hey. Hold on,” I murmured against her lips.

She pulled back a little.

It was the first time I ever felt wanted. Like desperately wanted.

So I tested the waters. First, I tucked a loose curl behind her ear. When I let my hand drop to follow the shape of her collar with my thumb, she shivered a little.

The words tumbled right out of me before I could stop them.

“I’m never going to see you again, am I?”

Valerie chewed the inside of her cheek and leaned in, pressing her forehead to mine. She smelled like incense.

“Do you want some of it?”

“Some of what?”

“The sunlight.”

Instinctively, I pulled back a little.

I thought I understood what she was offering. Divine inspiration, maybe. I knew what it had cost Valerie, but I still wanted what she had. I wanted to help her, too.

“I want you to promise something, Jane.”

“What?”

“Don’t abandon your art.”

Valerie must have heard that message on her answering machine. The one I had left in a drunk stupor so long ago. She was listening the whole time. I buried my long fingers in her curls and brought her face closer to mine.

“I promise.”

We poured into each other again.

Through half-lidded eyes, I could see a faint yellow glow on her face as we kissed. Something that felt like warm mist passed from her mouth to mine. I pulled her closer, ignoring the stinging at the corners of my mouth.

I only stopped when my throat started to burn.

I opened my eyes and blinked a few times. My first thought was that Valerie had slipped me drugs.

“Were your eyes always gold?” I gasped.

Valerie’s eyes widened.

“Did it change your sight?” she asked, mystified.

My breathing quickened as I looked around the pink bathroom. I could see every strand in the candlewicks, even the wispy threads of a spider’s web by the window.

I looked back at Valerie. At the gold in her eyes. At the yellowish light gathering beneath her skin.

Neither of us said anything for a long time.

I woke up to the sun in my eyes. I don’t remember how I got back to my bedroom. Between the bathroom and waking up, there’s just a big empty space.

I groaned, rolled over to the other side of the bed, and buried my nose in the lavender pillow. Valerie’s perfume still clung to it. I grinned like an idiot.

Oh. That’s what we did.

The stripe of sunlight creeping across the bed caught my eye. When I sat up, it slid up the wall with me.

I stared at it.

A folded note was sticking out from under my pillow. I pulled it free and unfolded it. Valerie’s handwriting went across the page in big swirls, like vines on a lattice.

“Paint what you see.”

I pressed my lips to the paper.

That day I bought my first easel even though I could barely afford it. I was painting constantly.

Within a month, I’d finished close to 100 paintings. Someone wanted to buy them. Someone wanted to buy them for a lot of money.

Bzz.

I didn’t have to work at that fucking drugstore anymore.

Bzzzzzzzzz.

For forty years, I never stopped painting what I saw.

Bzz. Bzz!

Is that my doorbell?

My assistant Brian rushes in. He’s shouting something. My name, I think. The moment he throws the curtain over the painting, I crumple to the floor, limp as a doll.

God. That sucked.

A week later, I’m back on my feet. Because of course I am.

And now, here I am, answering reporters’ questions about my own gallery opening.

The curtain is drawn back. The audience falls silent. I look over my shoulder and smile.

The painting shows the golden-eyed woman resting by a stream, her head bowed in sleep. Strands of gold thread have been woven into her dark hair.

For the first time, I wanted to see her close her eyes.

So I let her.

I hope the real Valerie found peace, too.

Her only album was hailed as a work of genius. But she vanished from public life shortly thereafter.

There are rumors. Of course there are.

My favorite is the one where she’s lost somewhere at sea. I like to imagine her married to someone who adores her, living somewhere quiet. Near the sea, not lost in it.

I catch a glimpse of a woman slipping through the crowd, heading towards the exit. I squint.

Dark hair is piled atop her head like a nest. I half expected to see a pair of eyes peeking out. An oversized peacoat is draped heavily over her shoulders. The cuffs are slightly damp.

Older now.

The same gold eyes.

Is it?

I’ve mistaken so many other women for Valerie. But she looks just like her. It’s uncanny.

We share a smile.

She winks before slipping out the door.

Valerie’s Gift was originally published in ILLUMINATION on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How do you speak of life when the life you speak of is your own?

Your name is written on it. You are the one expected to live it. And yet, how much of it has ever truly belonged to you?

In childhood, it belongs to your parents. In adulthood, it becomes entangled with your partner. By midlife, your children have claimed a place in it, too. And at the end, when everything has been lived or left unfinished, there is the graveyard, where even your name becomes an inscription on stone.

Somewhere between these stages, you are supposed to have lived.

But where?

Perhaps life is held together by more fragile things than we care to admit. We lean on people, relationships, responsibilities, and the promises we make to one another. These become the supports that keep us standing when our own strength is not enough. We tell ourselves that we are stronger because we have them. And perhaps we are. But every support comes with a cost. The more we depend on something to hold us together, the more of ourselves we sometimes surrender to keep it there.

There is a price to being needed. A price to belonging. A price to being loved in ways that leave little room for the person we might have been had we been left free to discover ourselves.

Sometimes, I wonder whether what we gain is worth what we lose. Whether the security of having a place in someone else’s life is worth the quiet disappearance of our own.

But this is how life seems to unfold. We inherit it before we understand it, surrender parts of it before we know what they mean to us, and keep moving because stopping to question it all is a luxury we rarely seem to have.

All I have ever wanted to know is this: What is my life?

Not the life I am expected to live. Not the life others recognise when they look at me. Not the collection of duties I fulfil, the roles I occupy, or the promises that keep me tied to the people around me.

My life.

The part in which I am present, not merely performing. The part that carries my choices, my desires, my silences, and the things I might have become if I had been allowed to follow them. I want to know which pieces belong to me and which I have gathered from other people’s expectations. I want to look at the life I have been living and recognise myself somewhere within it.

Yet every time I try to find an answer, life seems to strike back.

Before I can understand what I am feeling, something happens. Before I can gather the scattered pieces of my thoughts, another responsibility arrives, another expectation makes itself known, another part of me is called away. And just like that, I find myself back where I began, trying to understand what happened before I have even recovered from it.

All that remains is the pain.

It is not the kind of pain I can easily explain to someone else. It does not sit quietly inside me, waiting for the right words. It feels almost physical, as though a hand with enormous nails has closed around my heart and is slowly tightening its grip. I can feel the hurt, feel myself struggling beneath its weight, and yet I can do nothing to stop it.

I can only watch.

Perhaps that is what helplessness feels like: being present for everything that happens to you and having so little say in any of it. Knowing that something inside you is breaking, yet having to continue with the ordinary business of being alive as though nothing has happened.

Have you ever felt that way? I hope you haven’t.

There is something especially cruel about becoming a stranger to your own life. You wake up inside it every morning, carry out its demands, answer to its obligations, and move from one day to the next. From the outside, you may even appear to be doing everything right. And yet, somewhere inside, you feel as though you are standing at a distance, watching a life that bears your name but refuses to feel like yours.

It is like watching your own life burn while being unable to reach the flames. You can see what is disappearing. You can feel the heat. You may even know which parts of you are being consumed. But you cannot step forward, and you cannot step away.

And so the pain remains.

It has no name I know of. It finds no easy expression, no clear beginning to return to, no visible end towards which I can walk. It gathers in the places where my voice fails me, growing louder until even its silence becomes unbearable.

Sometimes, I wonder whether a life can be so far removed from the person living it that it begins to feel like something borrowed. Something handed over with expectations attached, something you are required to maintain without ever being told whether you were allowed to choose it.

And sometimes, I wish I had never been given this life at all.

Not because I know what another life would have looked like, or whether it would have been kinder. I simply wonder whether there is a particular sadness in being given something called your own and spending your years trying to find yourself inside it.

Perhaps the hardest thing is not that life asks so much of us. It is that, while giving so much of ourselves to keep it going, we can lose sight of the person for whom all this living was supposed to matter.

And I am still searching for that person.

I keep looking through the days I have lived, through the choices I have made and the ones I never seemed to have, hoping to find a small piece of myself that has not already been claimed by something else.

I do not know how much of my life belongs to me.

I only know that I am here, living it, and still trying to understand what it means to call it mine.

A Life That Never Quite Belonged to Me was originally published in ILLUMINATION on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.