Adagio

Adagio, Mackenzie Thorpe

There could be a time in your life when your surroundings look bleak. Maybe the landscape is bare. There isn't anyone nearby you can turn to for support. When you look up, the sky looks like it's frozen; you're not moving and neither is anything else.

But even in your darkest place, you'll always have the love you carry with you in your heart. Don't let it go because there may come a day when it feels like that's all you have. And as long as you have that, you'll be able to get through your darkest of days.

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About 4 months after getting hurt, my mom got me out of the house to go to a farmer's market and then meet her friend Chris for lunch.

I still had two casts on my ankles at this point, had to wear a back-brace and be wheeled around in a wheelchair. Children stared. Adults asked things that were none of their business. And adults stared too. Everyone did. Things were so very raw for me then.

Lunch with Chris was a couple shops away from an art gallery in downtown Pleasanton, Studio 7. We went in and saw the most beautiful collection in the front of the gallery. I took a pamphlet. Mackenzie Thorpe.

When I got home that night, I couldn't get one painting in particular out of my head - Adagio. I found it online and fell in love. I looked up "adagio" in the dictionary - slow movement. It's a musical term.

My mom picked up the pamphlet and saw that Mackenzie Thorpe, the artist himself, was going to be debuting the collection at Studio 7 the next day. I didn't want to go. Of course I really wanted to go, but I was... scared. Scared of so much.

I hated being in public and I really didn't want to be the sad crippled girl trying to meet an artist.

But my mom wouldn't let me say no. And thank god for that.

As soon as I saw Adagio again in person, I decided I had to buy that painting. There was no way I couldn't. One of the sales women brought Mackenzie over to me when she learned I was going to buy it.

He came over and asked me if I knew what adagio meant. He smiled to learn I had done my homework, and gave this explanation:
This guy's world is empty and dark and it's taking him a long time to make little progress, his sky is frozen. But look at what he's doing. He's still going.

The painting hangs on the wall facing my bed. And I am still going.