I painted this giant Hobbes the tiger in, I think, the eighth grade. My mom has had it on display for the subsequent three decades. I’m a lifelong dabbler in various arts, but I’ve kept the vast majority of my creations to myself, and paint is not a medium I feel much affinity toward anyway. Sometimes I’ve felt a little embarrassed that this enlarged comic panel remains the largest and probably best painting of my tiny oeuvre, certainly my best that could be said to be on display. I mean, it honestly looks pretty good for a school project, it’s just not original.

I don’t think about the past much. It’s only been in recent years that I’ve begun to process the idea that all the memories in my brain actually belong to me. Adulthood has just been a garbage bag holding the remains of the person I was supposed to become when I grew up.

Looking at the Hobbes painting now, it feels like uncanny foreshadowing that I depicted an imaginary friend in isolation, somehow severed from the mind that created him. One of the stories I tell myself to help process the trauma is that I went to sleep for twenty five years and my imaginary friends, out of desperation, took charge of my body.

I know I didn’t intend any such meaning to it. I think I probably sketched Hobbes first and simply ran out of time to add Calvin. I don’t think it matters, though. It’s my best painting, it means something to me, and I’m proud of it now.