Kilzing My Demons

BEFORE: I'm sure this room was heavenly to some teenager who lived in it before. To me, it's just frightening.

Here’s a quick revelation from my week: Kilz is not just an effective paint primer product for covering up ugly walls. It’s also an effective metaphor, my favorite thing, which can be liberally applied to any creative project.

My almost-three-year-old son wants his room in our new house blue. After hours and days spent covering up the hellish red walls and goth black ceiling, doors and baseboards, the fumes must have affected my brain. My epiphany is that layers are the key to my finishing this seemingly interminable project, and perhaps my novel.

Messy layer by messier layer, the ugly darkness beneath is covered, changed and eventually concealed by the white light of my persistent efforts. Every stroke counts. I despise this hideous, unsatisfying in-between stage, yet now realize how necessary it is.

IN BETWEEN: Painting the black ceiling almost kilzed ME!

Is the persistent black my negative past and insecurities? Could the intimidating red be the unknown of if, how and when I might finish my project? Either way, painting helps. I remain impatient but force myself to keep filling in the streaked gaps on the wall, and the ones in my artistic “self-conscious”, too.

Priming gets me closer to seeing that beautiful, vivid blue spread over the clean canvas, that much closer to the final product I envision. But Kilzing comes first–unglamorous, laborious and time-consuming as it may be.

AFTER: "Mommy painted my new blue room."