“Tug Of War”
This is a piece I thought of last year, that I never started. At the time, I thought the painting would be about being torn between two choices.
Holding on and letting go.
Staying and leaving.
The heart and the mind.
But I think I understand it differently now. Sometimes the hardest tug of war isn’t between two people or two paths. It’s within yourself.
It’s the part of you that still loves something, while another part knows you had to walk away. The part that remembers the beautiful moments alongside the painful ones. The part that misses what felt like home, while also remembering why you needed to find your way out of it.
And maybe growth isn’t about convincing yourself that you don’t love what you had anymore. Maybe it’s learning that you can love someone, miss them, remember them, and still choose yourself.
Recently, life brought me back to something I thought I had already made peace with. And suddenly, almost a year later, the question changed.
It’s no longer, “Do I still love this?”
Because I already know the answer.
The question became:
“What do I do with that love now?”
Maybe that’s why I never started this painting until now. Maybe I wasn’t finished living it.
The white-on-white texture represents everything we carry beneath the surface, the things we carry quietly, even when they can’t be seen.
The rope pulls in both directions, endlessly intertwined. Holding on. Letting go. Without ever fully unraveling.
This year cracked me open. And somewhere inside all of that breaking, something beautiful was released. Gold running through the places that broke, to reveal what was there all along.
And maybe this is what the tug of war was really about. Not choosing between two sides, but finally learning to hold both truths at once.
I can still love you.
And I can still choose me.
xo,
