Then 9/11 happened. Cady, Atticus, and I were drinking coffee on a rooftop in Dumbo, sobering up after a party, when the first plane hit. We watched the towers fall from the waterfront in silence, then decamped to a bar to watch the news coverage. We weren’t allowed back in our neighborhood for weeks. As we waited it out on sofas back in Brooklyn, I felt a creeping relief: Maybe we could never go back, and then I wouldn’t have to paint anymore. I could do something else.

But despite a layer of fine, brown dust, the loft was unharmed, and our landlord, scared to lose more income, offered fifteen-year leases when we returned, which we accepted gratefully. Broadly I thought of it as a ticking clock: I had fifteen years to make it.

After the failure of Ohne Titel, I fell into a multiyear depression and supported myself with a variety of odd jobs as I tried on different careers, other than painting, but none of them fit. My studio portion of the loft remained covered in that fine brown dust for years. I was her, that weird, depressed young temp in your office who when pressed says she’s thinking about applying to law school because it’s something to say, but she’s taking cooking classes, too, and maybe working for an NGO abroad is the next step, helping people, but she’s also always wanted to do hair, and you think to yourself as she talks, I might be unhappy, but thank God I’m not that lost.

I remained in the audience—went to shows, supported others in their successes—but stopped referring to myself as an artist. When asked about my work, I said I was on a sabbatical from painting. It was a pale, ivory-colored kind of lie. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone that I thought I would probably never, ever paint again—that I’d failed so spectacularly, I was too ashamed to try.

In that way I left a door open for myself, because I was afraid to say I quit out loud.

That open door was a gift. One day, painting came back to me, for the second and final time.

It was unexpected—I saw a group show of young women photographers at the International Center for Photography, a show that had the startling effect of a hard punch—and then painting blossomed in my chest overnight, like a bruise. When I woke up, feeling the need of it aching beneath the surface of my skin, I made that familiar walk to Pearl and handed over all my savings to Jonah. He smiled and gave me his discount. A good omen. Then I called my latest employer (I was, at that time, the assistant to the assistant of an upscale florist) and quit.