sol.ace_r

I no longer paint.
No— I can’t paint.
The canvases hanging on the wall are all empty.
Literally blank—white to the point they can’t even breathe.
No paint, no brushes, no sketches.
Just white. Nothing.

For over three months.
No, maybe longer than that.
Every morning I picked up a brush, every evening I put it back down.
I repeated that cycle, but I never once added color.

No—it wasn’t that I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
Because it wasn’t my hand that stopped—it was my heart.
It was dead. Just that.

The paint had all dried up.
Dust settled on the palette.
The brushes were rotting in a drawer.
Even when I opened it, they were just… objects.

Strangely, that didn’t feel bad.
That silence, that emptiness—it was oddly comfortable.
That place where nothing was required of me, where simply being there was enough—it hurt a little less.

I used to be someone who spoke in color.
Some people speak through music, some through poetry, some through movement.
I always spoke through color.
Everything I wanted to say, everything I couldn’t say—I painted it.

Some days I laughed in yellow.
Some days I cried in blue.
Some days I hid in black.

But now… I can’t take out a single color.
They’re all too vivid.
Too vivid—too sharp.
Those intense emotions tore me apart.
Joy hurt.
Sadness hurt.
Everything was too strong.

So I just wished it would all disappear.
Color itself.

Inside monochrome, it was quiet.
In that gray space, there was no me, no world—no one could see me.
So no one knew how broken I was, how I was collapsing.

That day was the same.
I opened the studio window like always.
Light came in—but there was no color.
Everything was gray.
The sky, the light, the wind, my hands, my body.
All gray.

It made no sense.
I knew it made no sense.
But it was real.
I was terrified.
So, so scared.
I was alive, but dissolving into monochrome.
It felt like disappearing.
Like being switched off somewhere.
I can’t explain how horrifying that sensation was.

Would it have been better if I’d screamed, cried, broken down?
From that day on, everything felt wrong.

At first, I didn’t tell anyone.
I thought it would pass in a few days.
I believed it had to.
But it didn’t.

The gray grew thicker.
It seeped into me and dragged me all the way down.
It was so deep—and there was no one there.

One day I stood in front of a canvas and couldn’t remember what I was even trying to paint.
No memories.
No emotions.
Nothing.

Just— empty.

I collapsed.
Everything collapsed.

I sat down right there, lowered my head, and did nothing.
Just stayed like that.
It felt like something was draining out of my body.

That was the beginning.
The days without color.

People ask me sometimes:
“Don’t you paint these days?”
“I’m waiting for your next exhibition—when will it be?”
“It’s just a slump, right? Everyone goes through that once.”

A slump?
That’s almost funny.
A slump is something people recover from.
I don’t even want to paint anymore.
How is that a slump?

This isn’t a lack.
It’s a void.
There’s nothing there at all.

I just… didn’t want to do anything.
I wanted to be forgotten.
I didn’t want anyone to call my name.

I didn’t get up even when I woke.
I didn’t look outside.
I didn’t feel sunlight or seasons.
I didn’t know when a day began or when it ended.

The room was dark.
I didn’t turn on the light.
I clung there like a shadow.

I wasn’t sad.
I wasn’t happy.
I was nothing.
I was just… not there.
Sometimes I wondered if emotions had ever existed at all.

And yet, being alive was the most unbearable thing.
My body was fine.
My heart was beating.
Time kept moving.

I hated that.
Why couldn’t it stop?
Why did I have to live like this—so empty?

Why me?

One day, I sat in the middle of the studio.
Paint tubes scattered around, a hardened palette, brushes in the drawer.
Everything was old, dried up, stopped.

Except me.
Only me was still alive.
Why only me?

So I whispered quietly:

“It’s okay if this is the end.”

A few days later, while rummaging through a drawer, I found an old letter.
A handwritten note from a teacher when I was young.

“You are a child who speaks in color.
Even when you don’t speak, people can feel your heart.
So don’t lose those hands—keep them with you for a long time.
They are the thread that connects you to the world.”

I thought, What use is that now?
And yet… 
just for a moment, a very brief moment, my throat tightened.

So I took out an unfinished canvas from long ago.
An old painting covered only in gray.
I opened the drawer and found one remaining tube of paint in the corner.

Purple.
A very pale, quiet purple.

Strangely, it hadn’t dried.
It was just… stopped.
Like me.

At first, I hesitated.
I picked up the brush, but my hand trembled.
I was scared.
Terrified.

Memories and emotions surged like a tsunami.
Old wounds tore open again.
It hurt so much—but still, just once, just one more time.

I touched the brush to the canvas, and the color spread.
Faint—but unmistakably purple.

That night, I opened the window for the first time.
Cold air came in,
and the room felt like it was breathing, very slowly.
The sky was dark.
There were hardly any stars.

But still—it felt like someone, somewhere, was breathing.
Or maybe…
that someone was me.

I whispered:

“I’m… not completely gone yet.”

I didn’t cry.
But somewhere deep inside, something felt like it was slowly waking up.

The colors haven’t all returned yet.
But… I got one back.
Purple.

And carefully, I began to paint again.

Not every day.
Some days I just stare out the window.
Some days I pick up the brush and put it right back down.

But I’m not completely stopped anymore.

The next color to return was graphite.
Between gray and black.
Heavy, quiet, wordless.
It feels like fragments of the depression still inside me are holding that color.

Bright colors haven’t come back yet—but that’s okay.

I think it’s okay not to be bright now.
For now… this is enough.
Just being able to paint again, even like this, is enough.


“Depression steals color, but finding color again
is a miracle that no one else can perform for you—
a miracle permitted only to yourself.”