Betty Boot

Today I faced a decision so dramatic it could alter the course of my entire recovery era. Should I paint Betty Boot?

Betty Boot certainly thinks so. She sits there, Velcroed and smug, radiating the confidence of someone who believes she deserves a portrait that will one day hang in a gallery where people whisper, “What does it mean?”

She thinks she is the emotional backbone of my medical journey.

Meanwhile, I paint like someone who just discovered shapes. My style is basically “geometry having a meltdown.”

So if I paint Betty, she will not look like a boot. She will look like a rectangle experiencing a spiritual awakening.

Part of me feels called to do it. It feels theatrical. It feels chaotic. It feels like reclaiming the narrative from a boot that has far too much main‑character energy.

But the other part of me fears the consequences. What if abstract Betty Boot becomes too powerful? What if she insists on being the centerpiece of a future exhibition titled “The Boot Era”?

I have not decided. But if Betty Boot becomes art, she is getting the most dramatic, unrecognizable portrait this living room has ever witnessed.

And she should be honored.