My Favorite Color is Blue

My favorite color is blue.  Coincidentally, so are his eyes.  They are, in fact, my favorite shade of blue.  Just enough green to cause you uncertainty when calling it blue.  And bright enough to make you want to soak in the color until it fills your lungs and you drown in it.  It’s a calm color that makes you think of sunny days and clear skies and crystal oceans.  And sometimes it makes me think of him until my heart beats out of sync and my eyes sting.  My favorite color is blue but it doesn’t feel quite the same anymore. 

I realize this is a little dramatic for being about the color blue, but it’s not just a color for me anymore.  It’s a word and a person and a look and a feeling all at once.

Have you ever met someone that wakes you up?  Like, you think you’ve been awake and alive all this time, but then they show up and you realize that you’ve been sleep walking for 19 years?  And once you wake up, you can’t go back to being the zombie you once were, and you don’t want to.

Well I met my wake-up call a long time ago.  He didn’t wake me up though until about two years ago and it’s been a mess ever since.  I know, you expected it would’ve been magic, and it was, until it wasn’t.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

To understand the story I’m about to tell you, I need you to do something.  I need you to close your eyes (metaphorically of course because there are more instructions for you to read with opened eyes), so do that first and then search for the one thing you’d die without.  I’m not talking about air or food or water or even literal death.  I’m talking about that one thing you need, that vital part of yourself that makes perfect sense even if you’re the only one who gets it.  Maybe it’s art.  Or making music.  Or listening to a specific song.  Or Harry Potter.  Find that one thing from the outside world that fits in your soul like a puzzle piece and completes you.  Do you have it yet?  I do.  I’ve had mine since I was 17.  It’s writing.  Stories, poems, crappy songs.  Stringing words together like beads and making something beautiful that other people want to experience.  Writing is my missing piece.  It completes me.

So, you have yours right?  Well you know how there’s something about that thing that makes it feel like it belongs to you?  Like no one else can ever truly understand it the way you do because it’s yours?  I know.  I thought so too.  Until I met him.

Finding someone who has the same “soul-puzzle-piece-thing” as you is terrifying.  And intoxicating.  And magical.  And weird.  It’s a lot to process.  You feel totally understood and completely vulnerable at the same time.  I know I did.  Writing was never something I shared with other people.  I waited until I had something thoughtful and polished and complete before I let anyone look at it.  Even after I put it up for someone to see, through email or on my blog, I didn’t want to talk about it.  I’m only good with words I can erase or scratch out, not ones that are permanent when they pop out of my mouth.  And I like ideas and edits on paper where they can’t cut me the way the look on someone’s face can.

So anyway, I finished a thoughtful, polished, complete project and posted it online.  And that’s when he showed up.  And he understood the maddening itch to pick up a pen.  He understood the schizophrenia of characters talking in your head all day.  He understood the scenes playing on the back of your eyelids every time you close your eyes.  He.  Understood. Me.  I felt like all my life, I’d been living on an island all alone and suddenly this other person was there too and I felt the world shift.  I knew it was one of those moments that changes everything.

For consistency sake, just so you know, blue is still just a color at this point in the story.  But that’s about to change.

We talked about writing for a few messages before we exchanged numbers and set plans to talk more over coffee.  And it was easy.  There are just some people who run on the same frequency as you, ya know?  And we did.  As soon as we started talking, it just made sense.  It was easy, like we were made to talk to each other about writing.

And then we met for coffee and we sat for hours poring over my manuscript.  I wasn’t really nervous at all, which was surprising given the fact that I was then dealing with a real person with real thoughts about something I wrote.  That whole earlier thing about not being good with verbal words and facial expression?  It melted away as we sat there.  He saw things in my writing and in me that I didn’t even know were there.  He had ideas and praises and criticisms and they all felt so valid because I knew that he, unlike anyone else I knew, understood the need to tell the stories running around in my head.

He had a project too.  Unlike me, he was brave enough to talk in concepts and share half-finished scribbles and sketches.  And somehow, it became second nature to talk to him about it whenever it came to mind, which was often.  We slipped into a friendship so easily that I’m not actually sure either of us noticed.  I don’t even remember when it became a “thing” for us to send random quotes or pictures or ideas to each other.  I don’t remember a time when his project wasn’t something he consulted me about.

We all have people like that, I think.  People we never expected that slip into our lives and become a habit.  People who fit so well that we can’t remember them not being part of us.

Somehow, coffee became more regular and a concept became a story and two people became friends.  Suddenly, I was awake in a world where someone got me in a way I didn’t know was possible.  And somehow, over that span of time, I got brave too.  Or maybe I just finally felt safe.  Is it still bravery if you do something scary when it feels safe?  Probably not.  Either way, I moved into a space with him where I, the queen of “thoughtful, polished, and complete,” began to show him ideas and beginnings rather than pieces.  I, queen of “written criticism so I don’t have to see your face”, began asking for help and clarity and validation.

Maybe that’s when blue stopped being a color.

When talking about writing became writing together.

When my work and his work stopped being separate entities and became our work.

Maybe that’s where it all went wrong.

When I attended a personal event that had nothing to do with words on paper.

When I met a family that so mirrored my own, I was stunned into awkward silence.

Maybe blue stopped being a color the night we almost got lost speeding down the highway and we talked a little too much about ourselves and not enough about the words.

Even then, blue didn’t hurt the way it does now.  That moment, in that truck, it was more than a color, but it wasn’t a memory yet.  It was a person I felt the world with.  It was a feeling of being known.  It started to hurt when I didn’t get to drown in it anymore and when the habit to lean on each other suddenly didn’t feel right.

Imagine finding your matching “soul-puzzle-piece” person and then having them torn out of you with no explanation.  The color blue would hurt you too.  Breathing would hurt you.  Hell, everything would hurt.

So imagine losing that, and not knowing why and not wanting to get out of bed or do anything at all, especially not your “soul-puzzle-piece-thing”.  And imagine grappling for some explanation, some reason why you got left behind and finding nothing. 

Wondering how it would feel?  It sucks.  But more than that, it feels like falling down the rabbit hole and watching the world you know and all light disappear with nothing to hold onto.  And there’s not a magic world of wonder at the bottom.  Or a rabbit with a pocket watch.  Or a disappearing cat.  The bottom is dirt and rocks and darkness.  The fall is scary.  The landing hurts every inch of your body and makes you not want to open your eyes.  Because when you do, all you know is that nothing is the way it should be.  Because if you open your eyes, you’ll be alone with no idea how to get back home.

I stayed at the bottom for a long time.  You would too, trust me.  And most days, my whole body aches with exhaustion just from breathing.  It took me a long time to pick up a pen and not feel drained immediately.  Some days, I still can’t put words on paper.  And then there are days like today where putting words on paper is all I can think about.  Days like today when words are the only thing holding me together and flowing out of me uncontrollably.  Days like this, the words come whether I want them to or not.  They’ll either spill onto paper or they’ll spill over the edge and onto my cheeks.  Sometimes, I’m not strong enough to make the choice because sometimes my very bones ache with missing and the color blue that isn’t just a color stabs into me with every breath.

Maybe no one will understand this last part.

Maybe you’ve found your matching “soul-puzzle-piece” person and are living happily together, so you can’t relate to this last part, because to you, there’s a color that’s a home too.

Or maybe you didn’t understand any of this but you’re still hoping to get something out of it.

The problem is, I didn’t write this for the millions of you that might or might not understand it.  I wrote it for me.  And for the one person out there that I think might understand.  The one person who lived all of this with me and might know what went wrong.  The one person who might know the other side of this story.  And it turns out I’m not brave at all, so I can’t show him this.