I picked up the paintbrush again and felt something in me return

Dear Delyara, I had not painted in years. The paints were old. The water jar was dusty. My hand felt awkward for the first ten minutes like it was meeting a former version of me in the doorway and didn’t know what to say. Then, very slowly, something softened. Colour. Attention. A quiet kind of absorption that had nothing to do with work, money, school, care, messaging, fixing, or being useful. For an hour, I was not managing a life. I was inside one. The painting itself wasn’t brilliant. That wasn’t the point. The point was that I felt less like a function and more like a person by the end of it. I needed that evidence.