I had an art gallery in my head holding all the paintings that the Broken Girl I was couldn’t paint anymore. At least not with brush in hand. The accident left me with a right arm that had no strength, and I couldn’t stand for very long at an easel anymore. Trying to work sitting down was very disconcerting after a lifetime of being able to pace around my canvas. And lately my left hand, which I’d been learning to use, had developed a little tremor that the doctors couldn’t explain. All I knew was it made detail work impossible. I could do broad strokes—big, painterly canvases—but the work I loved, the intricate paintings, were still out of reach.

So I did them in my head.

They took just as long as the physical ones did, but I didn’t begrudge the time. What did trouble me was that I couldn’t share them and that made me feel like I was talking to myself because I’d always seen the creative process as a conversation. Music needed listeners. Books needed readers. Art needed viewers. Not so much during the process. But for sure when it was done—or at least as done as art ever was. I always had to force myself to finally let go or I could fuss with a painting forever, even if the painting only existed in my head.

I know, it’s weird. But I’d always had an active imagination, and my whole life I’d been out of step with most of the world. After the accident, that didn’t change.

The accident.

I hated how my life was divided in two by an event over which I never even had control.

One moment, I was walking along the side of a street. The next, I’d been hit by a car. When I came to, I was in a hospital and parts of my body no longer worked as well as they once did. How was that for a wake-up call? But at least I woke up.

I didn’t know what I missed the most. Dancing and bounding about, going for long rambles when the city’s asleep, when it’s just me and all the wild and wooly spirits of the night out there on the streets. Or my painting. My art.

It was all one and the same, I guess. I’d always lived my life like it was this great big messy canvas that was never going to be finished, but that didn’t stop me from trying to experience and fill every square inch of it. Now everything felt separate. Everything took concentration. Things I used to just do without thinking. Standing up. Walking across the room. Getting dressed. And painting . . .