I once spilled light, but the world didn’t want to believe in magic. So, I learned to tuck it away. Hide the glow. Paint quieter things. Draw inside the lines.
Ever since I was born, light leaked from my hands. Gold. Strange. Beautiful. Swirling from my fingertips every time I would paint. The world would blur, and I’d fall into some trance. Letting the brush carry me to places no one else could see. I created galaxies and stitched stars into the margins of my notebook. I could see entire worlds in a single splash of paint.
My mother called it magic. She would always tell me I was special. And she was the one that made me promise to never stop shining.
But the world didn’t call it magic, they called it distracting. They didn’t call me special either, just a daydreamer.
So, over time, I learned to conform. To sit still. To think logically.
Until I didn’t shine anymore.
Before, when I’d pick up a brush, my room would explode like fireworks, but now there wasn’t even a shimmer. Even my soul was becoming dull and gray.
Slowly. Quietly. I was disappearing. And every time I looked in the mirror, I could barely recognize myself. The paint dried up. The canvases collected dust in my closet. And I began to act like the adult everyone always wanted me to be.
I thought maybe that’s just how life went. That maybe, you don’t get to shine forever. That maybe, one day, we’d all have to stop so we didn’t blind others. Get a real job. Settle down. Find stability. I told myself it was just part of growing up, and I shouldn’t miss it so much. But God, I missed it.
At my lowest, I began to question if I ever shone at all. Or had I really been daydreaming my entire life.
I was exhausted and felt uninspired most nights. So instead of picking up a brush, I’d just turn on the TV. Or anything to distract me from my dying soul. Because the one thing worse than losing your light is remembering what it felt like to have it.
I wrapped myself in normalcy. I started doing what people said mattered. The safe things. The practical things. Jobs that drained me. Days felt long. Smiles were fake. I was grateful, sure. But also sad. Hopeless. Mad. Tired. And more than anything, unsatisfied.
One night I felt overwhelmed. So instead of going straight home after work, I went to the field instead. It was late, so the stars were the only things keeping me company. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Growing up, the night sky was my favorite thing to paint. It brought me peace. And it’s the reason I got the nickname Star. My mom would always make jokes, telling me I shone so bright that she had to wear those sunglasses. And with a big grin, I always believed her.
It wasn’t until I got older and realized the truth. That she had cataracts and was going blind.
Lying in that field, I couldn’t help but remember how life was, how it used to feel. But more than that, I started thinking about how I always wanted life to be.
And as I stared up at the sky, it all came rushing back. Something I saw on TV. A woman. One that took shining to a whole new level. Unapologetically herself. One who poured every ounce of her soul into her passion and refused to back down because of any criticisms. They tried to dim her light. Told her to quiet down. To behave. To fit the mold. But she didn’t run away. Instead, she just ran.
Sha’Carri Richardson. Bold. Fearless. And true to herself. She didn’t let the world steal her light…but I did. And that frustrated me.
I cried that entire night. From the moment I left the field. To the moment I collapsed on the floor of my apartment.
Because in her, I saw the part of me I buried. The part that still wanted to shine. The part that believed, maybe foolishly, that I could become something bigger. That maybe my light wasn’t gone. Maybe I’d just tucked it away too deep.
So I snapped.
I ripped the closet door off its hinges. Threw everything out of the way until I found those damn canvases. I put my fist straight through the first one, it snagging on wood. I bled, but didn’t care. I wanted it to hurt. I wanted to feel something.
The second one, I grabbed it and slammed it to the ground. And I slammed it to the ground again. And I kept slamming until my knuckles threatened to break.
I was tired of holding it in. Ashamed for forsaking myself. Of how far I let myself drift. I wanted to shine again. I wanted to shine so fucking bad.
My hands were shaking. My heart raced. But I kept going. I kept destroying. And just as I grabbed the last blank canvas, ready to tear it apart, something cracked.
Not the canvas. Me. And finally, I felt like I could breathe again. Not those shallow ones, but the ones that would fill my lungs with hope.
So I did what I hadn’t in a long time — I picked up a paintbrush.
And I didn’t paint what I thought people wanted to see. I painted what I felt. I painted the ache and rage and beauty and raw emotion that was screaming in me. I painted until I freed my soul from the shackles of this world. The things that programmed me to not believe in myself, or worse, abandon myself.
And as I continued to paint, eventually, I saw it. For the first time in a long time, I could see the light I thought I lost.
It was faint at first. And then it wasn’t. It became a supernova. I became a supernova. Because though I was burnt out, somehow, I was able to shine brighter than ever before. And I made a promise to myself that night. That I’d rather die than ever lose my light again. And that I’d always strive to inspire others to embrace life’s magic.
