This past week has been nothing but stress and anxiety while I rushed to get things done that I forgot about over the long break. But what should I have expected after pushing off my responsibilities?

This time of year has me failing to dig myself out of my “mudslide” of stressors. But, when thinking broadly, my problems as a college student are small in comparison to the tragedies and toxic events happening every day in our world.

Our world has been full of negativity.

Last week, I found myself drowning in the toxic wasteland of the news cycle. I tried to find something positive to inspire me, but all I could find was sadness and tragedy. There was nothing I could write, nothing I could say to make anything better.

I sat on my floor for a few days working on a painting for a friend’s birthday gift when I had an epiphany on my situation.

I escape to artistic roots when words fail me. There are moments in this world when words just cannot give respite from the raw and excruciating truths of today’s society. I’ve never been good at talking about how I feel, but painting takes the anxiety away from communicating.

Days come when my words fail me but I hold the whole world with a paintbrush in my hand, and I am the creator of anything I need to express the intensity of feelings I can’t yet describe.

My art is a positive outlet to express myself and my feelings when words just can’t. Find your positive outlet and use it.

Artwork holds an unexplainable beauty and can serve as a reminder to all of us that there is strength, growth and light to be found in what we have the power to control.

Sometimes there are no words that give comfort for the tragedies occurring or the state our country is currently in, but this moment of self-realization proves something I have known to be true: communication, in any form, can take tragedy and turn it into passionate beauty.

Positive outlets and constructive expression of our feelings and emotions can really turn the dark days into moments of newfound hope.

I just want to remind everyone it is OK to not always have all the answers and all the right words. Expression in other forms can hold the same intensity as the most poetically spoken words. Find your outlet and use it.

Natalie Hilden is the Opinion Editor for The Collegian and can be reached at [email protected].