I am linking up with the Five-Minute Friday crew for the first time today. I read their one-word prompt each Friday, and desperately want to make myself write about it, but I am still working on writing on demand, which is much harder for me than rather than writing in a moment of inspiration.
(Also I feel the need to disclose that this feels really really vulnerable for me to write! An unedited jumble of words and phrases from my mind, raw and real. But I’ll just do it anyway because of the whole “practicing what I preach thing” and all that.)
Anyway. Blue.
The colors failed me many times in the last two weeks. Often causing me to get stuck in my closet. Blue, usually such a safe color, felt too bold, too strong, and no shade was correct. Pink made me nauseous one morning and I could barely tolerate dark maroon. The drive home that day was torturous. Greens and blues and so much stimulation I couldn’t breathe.
Usually I crave colors, crave blues and purples and pinks. But on those days, I felt calmer and safer with monochromatics. Black shirt. Or black pants. Whites. Tans.
Historically, being stuck in a depression is when I need colors and can’t find them. Anxiety is when the colors are there, but swirling so fast I can’t breathe. (Metaphorically speaking, or something). That….chaos was different. The colors were there. And calm. But I didn’t want them. The world didn’t seem real and the world was too overwhelming and maybe it was just easier in gray and black and white right then. And nothing was wrong internally except the colors were just messed up.
Lime green thunderbolts were trapped in black holes.
Storms of black with red lightning bolts raged on.
Blues were twisted and turned, into tornadoes instead of oceans.
Sunglasses needed for shades brighter than pastels.
Hues were corrupted, a type of sorcery, ruining the pure.
So I fingerpainted brown flowers.
And have been finding ways to release and free my precious colors ever since.