Mark Rothko, Untitled No. 11, 1963, 1963

Every once in a while, I get a strange urge to visit an old friend. A compulsion, really. Emotion drives me up Ward Parkway and down Oak Street. After climbing up what seems like a ridiculous amount of stairs - I really shouldn't be this winded - I enter into the calming interior of my home-away-from-home, the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. I warm up with some Kline and Giacometti before sidling up to the gaping black hole in the room - the Rothko.

It's the only work that has a perimeter set up around it. And what a frustrating perimeter it is. Allowing you close enough to start to experience the painting properly, but far away enough to leave a strip of white wall in the periphery of your vision. My OCD cringes at the awkward border. But soon, the rest of the room ceases to exist as I'm sucked into the vortex that is Untitled No. 11, 1963.

Dread roils in my stomach. Every sharp word, emotion, or look resurfaces. Self-doubt, self-loathing, loneliness, futility, fear, wash over me. All that I keep bottled up inside pours out of me into the canvas. It swells with my emotion, pregnant with my deepest fears. The shapes swim before me. Darker tones turn light. The middle swath throbs, floating closer and farther away. The bottom third recedes backwards into the middle third while the top section melts down. The painting comes to life. Suddenly, the darkness and gloominess of the colors brighten. As my pupils widen, the contrast lessens, and details like the few drips of darker paint on the lighter bottom section surface. Breathing comes easier. Those dark emotions leave as fast as they arrive, and I'm left both wiping away tears and laughing softly in front of my Rothko.

I look like a fool, smiling like a maniac, chest heaving with the rush of emotion. Whenever I stand in front of that Rothko, I feel like I've been given the secret to understanding art - that one piece of information that I have been missing all my life. Every time I visit, I give a small part of myself to Untitled No. 11.  Rothko reminds me that the best way to overcome an emotion is to experience it. For that, I am thankful.