the meeting

today was the day of the art professor meeting.

i've been dreading and anticipating this moment since maybe five minutes after i made my decision. this would be the test, the final indication of whether my life has any validation at all.

he flipped through the entire portfolio in about three minutes.
he was silent.
i was silent.

funny how you can pour all of yourself, hours and hours and days and weeks of frustrations, into whisps of paper that can be evaluated in little more than ten seconds.

"good," he finally said. "i wouldn't include this one," pointing to the watercolor i'd completed just that morning, "and maybe even this one," referring to the smoothly blended pastel portraiture of my sister, "but the rest is very good. you have a great sense of composition, a good eye for detail, and a firm handle on your technique and style. you've demonstrated just what we want."

we talked about how i had come to be sitting there. how after twenty years of preparation and 150 credit hours of college i had thrown medical school out the window.
"so why this?" he asked.

it's too complicated to say it just at once, just so. maybe because i felt like i had been lying to myself for years. maybe because i couldn't look my parents in the eye when they asked about my classes. maybe because i couldn't look myself in the eye when i thought about my future.
but art? why art? i don't know. it was something new, something i have never tried before. it felt like a gift, unopened, something i had been saving for the very end. the best for last.

he told me as i was leaving that he saw absolutely no reason why i should be rejected, that my works nearly guaranteed me a spot. he offered an encouraging smile and a concluding handshake.

i left a friend a voice message immediately after, relating the experience in a monotone voice.
she called me right back.
"do you even want this?" she asked.

maybe it's because i don't want to get my hopes up, or because i'm still afraid of rejection, or maybe it's because i'm secretly terrified of not fulfilling my potential in this direction, that this could turn out to be a cataclysmic dead end, but i only have one thought.

don't ask such hard questions.