I can't exactly remember my first moments of anxiety. It was so long ago, before the omnipresence of the internet, before I could even define what that unpleasant feeling tormenting me actually was. "I feel like I'm afraid of something, but I don't know what," is the sentence I uttered countless times, desperately asking for help.
The birth of my love for painting, however, I remember vividly. As a little girl who fell in love with literature too early, I was the favourite of every adult who loved books. When I was ten, my language teacher gave me the book Lust for Life — the biography of Van Gogh. It was the most inappropriate and the most beautiful thing she could have given me at that moment, with an inscription that I will forever have tattooed on my heart.
I read it in one breath, obsessed with that unusual man. I understood very little, yet somehow everything was perfectly clear to me. I don't have the internet, I can't see anything except the sundial on the covers, so I imagine paintings during the nights when I can't sleep.
By pure coincidence, that same year we travel to Paris. We arrive in the evening and step out of the apartment, and before us, like a lighthouse, rises the Eiffel Tower. I will never forget those butterflies.
The next day we go to the Louvre. I'm anxious in front of the Mona Lisa — what kind of nonsense is this? This isn't my art, this isn't my Van Gogh. My parents, who always built a nest for every one of my passions, take me to see that famous Van Gogh. Impressionism is everything I imagined it would be. It brings me lighter feelings, tenderness, and freedom. I fall in love with painting and develop a special relationship with art.
Years later I start psychotherapy, but art forever remains my melatonin. My quick fix. I returned to Paris several times after that. For me, it is always that pillar of art and an oasis of spiritual beauty. It is a city where I know nothing of anxiety, only beauty and freedom. That is the feeling I wish for everyone.