Mysister was the Artist, given infinite amounts of paper, paints, markers andcrayons. I was the Intellectual, receiving books. I had no objections, preferringprivate worlds to messy pastels. But one day, while cleaning my room, Idiscovered an empty pad of watercolor paper. Further searching uncoveredwatercolors and a paintbrush aching for use. My music was blaring, and somelong-abandoned part of me twisting within the confines of the monotonous routineof school, books, and studying sprang free. Water was obtained and a picturedrawn. It was nothing incredible, but the feeling that I had poured into it was.From then on, I couldn't create enough. I composed, drew, painted - always withmusic that intensified and clarified the emotions I put on paper. Slowly, Iimproved. And as I did, sitting in my unsatisfactory green room, I began to yearnfor something big, a masterpiece, an ongoing creation.

The transition wasboth sensible and unthinkable. Sensible because in my mind it was a naturalprogression, unthinkable because I knew of no one who painted murals on theirbedroom walls. It began with a yellow moon set against a black night. If I hadknown how tiny the effort that moon took would be compared to my later creations,I might have given up then. That is the only time in my life that I am glad tohave been ignorant of something.

My pictures grew around the moon.First the nature scenes, then the girl encircling them, then the comet. On and onwent my masterpiece. I, the girl who would only wear blue, could not believe thecolors bursting from my paintbrush. I slept facing my bright creation, the huesimprinting themselves on my previously monochromatic brain.

At times thereseemed so little there, the amount of unpainted space enormous, and at times Icould not believe the amount of wall I had covered with color andfeeling.

I knew I loved my walls, but I never grasped how much until theday I painted over them. My room was being re-decorated, and my pictures were notpart of the plan. I had painted them with the knowledge that they wouldn't last,but when the last remnant of color disappeared beneath pale blue, I was surprisedby the loss I felt.

I fall asleep now staring at the clean, cool blueblanketing the colors beneath. They may now be covered, but I have had a taste ofthem. I have had a taste of shattering my own preconceptions, as well as those ofothers, of pushing through the surface to see what lies beneath. What I foundthere changed me, and no longer will I be so quick to dismiss the ideas I hear,the people I meet, or, most importantly, myself at face value.