Sketched Out

You know how sometimes you get that feeling that someone's watching you, but you look around and no one seems to be paying you any attention?

Today in lecture, I had such an intense feeling of being watching. The hair on my neck stood up and I got a little anxious. I kept looking around, but everyone around me was either engrossed in lecture (Yay renal pathology) or asleep. I was a little unnerved by my oversensitivity, but couldn't shake the feeling.

Then there was a tap on my shoulder. When I turned around, this boy in my class that I don't know terribly well handed me his notes.

He had sketched me.

It was really beautiful, too. I was shocked - on the side of a chart noting the difference between pre-renal and post-renal failure... was me. Or part of me anyway. It was of my jawline, neck and hair, with a few lines for my glasses and cheekbone. He generously left out my goofy nose as well as my "revolting against me from all the traveling" skin. It was really lovely.

I didn't know what to say, especially as we were in lecture where one really shouldn't say anything. I looked at him a little incredulously and said a soft, "Wow" and handed his notes back to him.

At the break he said that he had tried to sleep but was restless, so was drawing things around him instead. I wanted to say how beautiful I thought it was, how impressed I was, how I felt lovely because of it. But he was laughing about how he had drawn the professor too, whose picture did not have quite the same bragging qualities about it, so I laughed with him, said offhandedly that it was lovely, and went out for a stretch.

Though I didn't tell him so, it changed the whole feeling of my day - and not only being validated for feeling watched. It was like being shaken awake. I suddenly saw beautiful things and colors and lines and shapes all around me. I've never wanted to be an artist to much in my life as today, so as to capture this casual, transient loveliness. It reminded me that there is beauty everywhere, if I were only to look for it. I had forgotten.