I’ve always said my paintings are portals. But sometimes they become mirrors — reflecting back what I tried to bury decades ago.
Recently I finished a piece. On the surface, it was just Little Red Riding Hood — a girl with big eyes, like so many of my subjects. But this canvas was different. The girl came out unsettlingly alive. She stood in a doorway, holding a basket, looking straight at me. When I laid down the final stroke and stepped back from the easel, something went through me like a current. I understood exactly what was depicted here, and whose gaze that was. It was the gaze of someone seeing you off forever.
I named the painting “Door Number 36.”
These aren’t random numbers. It’s a real door — behind which lies a story about how I voluntarily offered myself as a sacrifice, and about the shortest yet most emotionally devastating goodbye of my life.
A Cup of Tea and Audacity
To understand the depth of this canvas, you have to go back to the very beginning. A cold autumn day. I was much younger, skating, and I didn’t have enough money for a bus ticket. To stay warm and keep my energy up, I carried food with me and a thermos of tea.
I sat down, took a break, poured myself some. That’s when a girl came up to me. She was noticeably younger than me — I can’t even remember the exact age gap now. She saw my thermos, moved closer, and simply said she was cold and asked if I’d pour some for her. In that moment I couldn’t have cared less about her, but I didn’t push her away. “You want some — drink, just leave some for me,” I said. Then she spotted my food and asked for that too. I shared everything and skated off.
When I came back, the thermos was empty and every last crumb of food was gone. Looking back now, I can almost smile at that. But in that moment I was furious — some completely unknown girl had the nerve to drain my only source of warmth and eat everything I had on that freezing day. But that’s exactly how we met. We started talking, began running into each other more often — though it never once crossed my mind that anything could grow out of it.
The Bus and the Choice of Fate
Then our paths diverged, and we didn’t see each other for two years. A coincidence changed everything. I was on a bus; she stepped on. I didn’t notice her, but she spotted me immediately — as if she felt my energy, as if something pulled her toward me. Getting off the bus, she caught my attention and waved. I recognized her, gave a slight smile, and rode on.
That same evening I got a message from her — an invitation to a Halloween party. It threw me completely off balance. No one in my life had ever genuinely invited me anywhere. Up until that moment, I always felt like invitations came my way only so the person could say they had asked — not because anyone actually wanted me there. But here I felt something clean and real — the pure, undisguised joy of someone wanting specifically me to show up.
I hesitated for a long time. I couldn’t make up my mind. Back then I didn’t yet know how to read those impulses, but looking back now, across all these years, I know exactly what that was: the breath of Fate. That exact crossroads where you choose which line of your life to step onto. And I went.
The Night I Took What Was Mine
She welcomed me very warmly, and that surprised me again. There were a lot of her friends at the party — I didn’t know a single one of them. And there was this one guy carrying himself like he owned her. I felt like an idiot. I thought: why did I even come here? It felt like the whole thing was a joke at my expense.
Toward morning I quietly got dressed and simply left for home. On the way I got a message: “Why did you leave?” I replied politely that I had no desire to be the one standing in the way of her relationship. And almost instantly the answer came back: he’s not her boyfriend, there’s nothing between them, that’s just how he is.
I froze. I was already standing nearly at my own front door. And there it was again — that same feeling, like holding a lever in my hands capable of switching reality. I turned around and went back.
I walked in without knocking. I went into the room and saw her asleep, with that guy lying next to her, his arm around her. I understood I had nothing to lose. I walked over, grabbed him by the leg, and pulled — with some kind of primal, raw force rising from somewhere deep inside. He was bigger, heavier, and stronger than me, but there wasn’t a single drop of real character in him. I simply threw him out of the bed, took his place, and put my arms around her. And when he tried to come back, I shoved him away: “Spot’s taken.”
The Alchemy of Self-Sacrifice
Maybe I made a massive impression on her that night — I honestly don’t know. But from that moment, something strange and deep began between us. Our connection became something else entirely, and so did I. I became everything to her.
I could walk through every single day of it, but it still hurts, so I’ll cut to the core. I started supporting everything she did. She realized she was being pulled toward sport. She had a choice in front of her: stay in music, or take the risk and go after athletics — with not a single cent to her name. Without hesitating I told her: “Choose what your heart tells you. Don’t be afraid to risk it. And I’ll help in every way I possibly can.”
And I kept that word down to the very last drop. I supported her not only emotionally but, in the early stages, financially as well. I gave her all of my attention. To be completely honest — I sacrificed my own dreams, my own goals, and myself, for no other reason than to see her happy and to give her a real shot at this life. And it worked. My belief, my money, her stubbornness and her work — it all paid off. People started noticing her. She was offered a deal: clean the gym in exchange for free training. She agreed without a second thought. She began spending more and more time there, and less and less with me. But that had been the whole point from the very beginning — for her to get noticed, and to stop being financially dependent on me.
But time passed. She changed. And I, sacrificing myself, kept hauling this weight on my last remaining reserves — because her goals kept growing, and I kept funding them. In that race I didn’t notice my own critical exhaustion. I didn’t notice myself slowly disappearing. And worst of all — I didn’t notice that I had stopped being interesting to her. I had given more than she was even capable of comprehending.
A coldness began coming off her. Slowly but surely it pulled me under into depression. She was growing, blooming, other men were paying her more and more attention. And I had become completely invisible.
The Betrayal
But I am a person who always keeps his word. I wanted to see it through to the end, to fulfill everything I had promised her. I have never betrayed anyone.
And then my life was torn apart. My brother, addicted to gambling, lost an enormous sum of money. He took out fast loans — in his own name, in our parents’ names, and worst of all, in mine. The entire financial catastrophe came crashing down onto my shoulders. I had to deal with debt collectors and pay back enormous sums I had never borrowed. I had one way out — take him to court. But that would have meant prison for him. I couldn’t send my own brother to prison over money — he was too weak in character for a place like that, it would have simply broken him. I took the blow myself.
In the darkest moment of my life, I went to her. And she didn’t believe me. Her final words on the matter were: “You’re lying. You made all of this up.”
That was a devastating blow. The person I had genuinely loved, trusted, and sacrificed my own life and dreams for — simply turned away from me. I didn’t receive a single drop of support in the moment when things became truly unbearable.
And then, a little later, through her closest friend, I learned the truth. It turned out she had been spending her evenings with another man for a long time already. They had met at that same gym, and he had become her person. That’s when I finally understood where that killing coldness toward me had come from. What shook me was that she hadn’t said it to my face herself. And when I asked her directly, she simply said: “Sorry, but that’s just how it goes…”
Oil Paint and Concrete Steps
Before everything finally fell apart, I had been invited to her upcoming birthday — still months away. I had already started preparing her gift. For the first time in my life I picked up oil paints and painted a portrait. I painted her.
I finished the canvas a few weeks before the day. The paint was still wet, still not dry. I wrapped that damp canvas in ordinary plastic wrap and went to her — not even knowing whether she was home at all. I climbed the stairs and stopped at her door.
Door Number 36.
I stood there for exactly ten minutes. I stared at those numbers and didn’t know what to do. A thought kept circling in my head: maybe just leave the portrait here, right on the doorstep? Let it stand there like a silent monument to all those times I had spent hours sitting on these cold concrete steps in the stairwell — freezing, waiting for her to come home so we could take her dog out together. But I pushed that thought away. I pressed the bell.
The Last Look
A few moments later the door opened. She stood in the doorway. Her voice was very calm, but there was surprise in it. She understood instantly that something irreversible was about to happen.
She stood there holding a small bag — she was on her way out somewhere with her friend. She offered to let me come in, wait, and then go together.
“No,” I said. “That’s not why I’m here. I brought you your birthday present.”
I held out the portrait. Through all those layers of plastic wrap it was nearly impossible to make out the image. In my haste, in my desperate need to sever this thread as fast as possible, I hadn’t even signed the canvas.
She gently took the painting into her hands. And looked at me. Frozen in that look was one single, silent question: “Will we see each other again?” She understood everything. She understood this was the ending, that I was leaving her life for good. Quietly, calmly, without a scene. I can’t recall my exact last words. I think I said: “I don’t think so.” Or maybe I said nothing at all. I simply didn’t want to lie to her.
That last look of hers, standing in that doorway, is burned into my memory for the rest of my life.
The Mirror of Little Red Riding Hood
And now, ten or twelve years later — I’ve lost count — I’m standing in my studio, painting Little Red Riding Hood in oils. And throughout the entire process, as I mixed the colors, as I laid down layer after layer — a reel of film kept running behind my eyes. I watched the entire story, every single frame, from that very first cup of tea all the way to the last second standing at her door.
I make the final stroke. I step back from the canvas.
And I see that it’s a mirror. A perfect, absolute reflection of that entire story. It’s her. Standing in a doorway, holding a basket. Looking straight at me with that same gaze. The gaze with which she saw me out of her life forever.
I have forgotten nothing. My energy, my pain, and my sacrifice have finally found their way out — and sealed themselves inside this artifact.
