THERE IS HOPE, THINGS DO GET BETTER, CONTINUE ON WITH YOUR LIFE AND DON'T MISS YOU DOUBLE RAINBOW OF HOPE, LIKE RYAN DID !!!.....It rains and it rains and it rains, but sooner or later, the Sun always comes out again, the last 28 years of my life have been the absolute BEST YEARS of my life, since I almost ended my life 6 times within about a minute of the act of suicide back in 1989, because of what I was going throug........ YOU CAN LIVE WITHOUT THAT OTHER PERSON , WHO YOU THINK THAT YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT, THERE ARE BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE OUT THERE, just waiting to take the place of that other person, who you think that you can't live without. It has been 28 years since Fran divorced me back in 1989 and not only have I learnt to live without Fran, I have learnt to live without any other mate in my life for 28 years now and I have learnt how to be happy with myself and how to love myself and like I said, the last 28 years, I call "The Resurrection Years" because they have been the best and happiest years of my life. Now this extremely intensely powerful hush hush drawing of mine I titled "Ryan's Rainbow". It's a true story about an 18 year old young man, who's name is Ryan Geib, who had just committed suicide back in 2000 on June 11th. Over 150 high school students from Zion Benton High School stood in line down the side block of Condell Funeral Home in Zion Illinois, in June 2000, looking up to the eastern sky as they waited their turn to go into Condell Funeral home to pay their respect to Ryan Geib at his wake......Suddenly their appeared in the eastern sky the most beautiful double Rainbow that those kids had ever seen.....when my youngest daughter told me about the beautiful double rainbow in the eastern sky as those kids waited to get in to Ryan's Wake, I immediately told her the thought that came into my head and that thought was, "That was Ryan's Rainbow, he missed it by 3 days, he gave up and ended his life too soon. After I said that to my daughter Tammy that day, in 2000, I always wanted to do a drawing and title it Ryan's Rainbow, but over the next 16 years every time I tried to sketch out something, things just wouldn't come together, the way that I wanted them to and things just wouldn't fall in place, as if it just wasn't the right time yet. Then 16 years later on September 10, 2016, even though I had quit drawing about two years before, because of my hands, my wrists and my fingers hurting so bad when I draw, I decided that I must try again to create my drawing that I have been wanting to create for 16 years now; "Ryan's Rainbow", it is an extremely sad story and it will be a very sad, heart wrenching drawing, BUT I AM CONVINCED ON THE OTHER HAND, THAT SINCE IT IS SO STRONG OF A DRAWING AND IT WILL BE EVEN HARD TO LOOK AT, THAT IT JUST MIGHT BE ABLE TO SAVE PEOPLE, WHO SEE IT FROM COMMITTING SUICIDE THEMSELVES, AND IF IT CAN SAVE AT LEAST ONE PERSON, WHO SEES IT FROM COMMITTING SUICIDE IN THE FURTURE, and if it helps at least one person to be a survivor, then I am OBVIOUSLY REALLY SERIOUSLY MEANT TO DRAW IT, no matter how much pain I must endure in my hands wrists and fingers to complete it. As I decided those things that week, on the very day that I decided to start drawing the basic outline of an unfinished attic with a large window through which a beautiful double rainbow will be seen, and a noose hanging just a little right of the window, I believe that a powerful sign from heaven appeared in the eastern sky once again about an hour after I finally started to draw a rough study for my drawing that afternoon. About an hour after I started to do a rough study for "Ryan's Rainbow".....a very amazingly beautiful double rainbow, just exactly like the one that appeared in the eastern sky the night of Ryan's wake at Condell Funeral home. As I decided to take a short break from my sketching, Trinity and I left my apartment for a short while to go to Jewel to get some things. As we were on our way to Jewel we drove past Condell funeral home on Sheridan Road in Zion, where Ryan's Wake was and as we looked up into the Eastern Sky we saw the most beautiful Double Rainbow that we had ever seen, thus confirming that I was definitely meant to do the drawing, 17 years later and 2 years after I had quit drawing because of my hands being so bad. Ryan had problems at home, with his mom and his stepfather, but he had just graduated from high school and he had his whole life and world before him and he could have moved out on his own and he could have made a better life for himself, but he gave up 3 days too soon and he miss his double Rainbow of Hope by 3 short days........Therefore, don't ever give up on your life...things can always get better, my Italian mother-in-law used to say to me during the hardest 2 years of my life, "You know Stevea, my momma always used to say to me, it rains and it rains and it rains, but sooner or later the sun always comes out again".....THEREFORE PEOPLE DON'T MISS YOUR DOUBLE RAINBOW BY 3 DAYS LIKE RYAN DID !!!!.......Keep Trucking on !!!.....".....the sun always comes out again". I decided to go with a drawing of an unfinished attic, instead of an unfinished garage, because I like the composition of the almost roundness of the attic, which goes better with the roundness of the rainbow, instead of the square look of a garage, I felt that it would just look better and that I can make like echoes of very dark rainbow colors on the edges of the 2" x 10" unfinished boards that surround the attic room, ( I drew everything in the attic pitch black except for the dark rainbow colors echoing around the room on the edges of the 2" x 10" boards and except for the beautiful double rainbow that the viewer will see through the window in the middle of the attic. The inside of the attic will be so dark with only the dark rainbow colors highlighting the room, to representing that so often when things look so dark inside, we have to force ourselves to look outside of ourselves and our dark situations and to see the sun and the double rainbow that awaits us in our future if we can just stick it out until the storm and the rain is over. Also to represent that we have to seriously look outside of our dark nature of self and self despair and see all of the people, who are much worse off, than ourselves and to see all of the good things outside of our dark inner despair that are worth living for. Anyone, who has never been in the shoes of the one standing in the window with the house on fire, does not and they cannot understand this dilemma, the dilemma of the person on the verge of Suicide, unless you have been in their shoes and you have been that close and either you committed suicide, or you were that close, but somehow you ended up being a survivor miraculously, then you will never and you can never understand the following quote by ? David Foster Wallace......But if you have been that close, standing in the very shoes of a person on the verge of Suicide, then you will totally understand and totally relate to his words here. “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” ? David Foster Wallace