The Colors of Grief

The first color of grief is gray, that feeling of neither sadness nor joy. It's like all color has been sucked out of your life. You walk on a plain of apathy. You know you are missing something from your life, but for the moment, you refuse to think about it. You are nothing surrounded by nothing. Years later, I still find myself, at times, stranded in a gray valley. It's difficult to leave. It's safe. It's familiar. This is a protective color.

Next is blue, an overwhelming, suffocating blue. It fills your lungs and stings your eyes. It's a tsunami of pain that washes over you and violently tosses you to and fro. You search for any life rafts in the form of friends and family. I was never given a life raft; I had to learn to dive into the crests and keep my head about water. No one heard my cries for help, so I stopped crying. Even now, if I saw a bobbing yellow speck on the horizon, I would swim the other way. 

Gold is the gilded mask you wear, beautiful and perfect. "How well-adjusted she is!" "You are so strong!" No one sees the face under the facade of strength, of flippancy, of humility. Your vulnerability is protected. You keep everyone at a distance, for their protection and yours. I grow weary of the decorated deception, but it has grafted to my face. To remove it would tear my flesh and leave me exposed.

Green creeps through, wrapping serpentine arms around you, pulling you in deeper and deeper. Jealousy bitterly entangles your thoughts, twisting them into a dense unrecognizable jungle. Why was she allowed to die, but I have to live? Why can others express their grief, but I have to conceal mine? Green is insidious. It slowly grows, taking root in your soul. You cannot weed out green without killing part of yourself. 

Red is a two-edged sword. It is love that cuts deeper than indifference, sorrow, self-protection, jealously, and bitterness. It leaves you bleeding. It is rage that cauterizes yet never heals. Red burns through you in equal parts passion and anger. Both feed and fight each other. Because I love, I have rage. Because I rage, my love is abused, left bruised and broken, hidden away.