By Kaz
Everything I see comes to me in shades of blue, purple, and pink.
It’s not a surprise. I’m quite possibly the furthest thing from artistically inclined that my family has produced in multiple generations. For me, visually, colors are significant. Symbolic. Everything is the way it is for a reason.
Blue.
Blue becomes synonymous in a way with the pain I’ve experienced, but more than that, that I’ve survived said pain and that I am still alive. The dark blue reminds me of bruised knees and the shadows in the corner of my room, and over time, getting up when I hit the ground and wiping the tears from my eyes in my hardest moments, because I can’t afford a moment of vulnerability—not now. That time will come later,when I’m sitting alone. The light blue of the sky on a sunny day is a vivid reminder of the good days that have passed, and the good days left to come. I learned once that blue is the rarest color to find in day-to-day life and the older I get, the more I understand the sentiment that follows that. Blue is a reminder of everything—good and bad—that has helped to make you who you are today. The hardest challenges one faces in life don’t come every day, and the importance comes with the days in between, and how one chooses to take control of one’s lives. Seeing blue takes on the exact same meaning for me of seeing how far I’ve come and how far I still have left to go.
Except that distance seems a little less vast, a little more possible, when everything seems to shift just a little, and I see the world from a new angle.
Purple.
I like to think that I see the purple of the world in a different way than everyone else around me. Of course, it’s a foolish notion—no two people see the world in the exact same way, so obviously I do, but in my eyes, purple is so self-assured, so natural. Purple is the color of a single dancer in a crowd filled with every other color of the rainbow, unafraid and unapologetic as they seek their own passion, and it is the color of someone who is fearless with their wants and beliefs, willing to die for them. It is complex and always-changing, and it has a heartbeat of its own that it dances to, and try as hard as they may, no one can stop it. Purple is a sentient creature of its own, with its own feelings and emotions, and while it can be overwhelming at times, it can also be healing. It’s what I want to be—the sharp, gut-wrenching pain that overtakes me every time I’m told I can’t do something.
It is the color that people will follow, will spend their entire lives seeking, and never come any closer to reaching because it dances just out of their grasp. And that’s the beauty of it.
Pink.
Pink is so soft and so gentle that every time I see it, my heart aches. I grew up surrounded by jokes about it. My mind has come to associate with it with kindness. It’s the color of dresses to fancy parties and nail polish on hands that hold one another tightly, in the stolen moments that one thinks of fondly, days, months, years later. When I’m most unsure of myself and who I am, I come back to it. It’s an experience of self-identity and coming to terms with who I am. I think of it now as I stand alone from the crowd, watching the people I call friends gather and wave, and know that I’m a little less alone when I’m with the people I love, the representation of pink itself.
It’s the beauty of colors.
Kaz is in southwestern Ohio in the U.S. and is a first-year English student with a certificate in Copyediting and Publishing.