Coloring In My Numbness

Color is generally defined as the visual reflection of light off an object. For a maximum understanding of my essay, however, try to think about color as rather a feeling or a state of being. When a person is sad, we say he feels blue. The first color to come to thought with anger is generally a bright red. In the occurrence of traumatic events, the human brain has the extraordinary power to shield itself from the overwhelming colors with grey. Grey is a lack of color and for our purpose a lack of feelings: numb. My story is that of a colorblind woman learning to see.

My first glimpse of color transpired at the Humane Society. It was somewhat of a glittering, pale pink that occurred as Joe, a seven-year-old Rottweiler mix with flea-bitten ears and a scabbed neck from life on a chain wagged his tail for the first time.

Hope, I believe is what it’s called.

Then there was the time Larry, the aging cashier at the Shell gas station said for the hundredth time “Tea’s on me today, Bracelets,” And I felt earnestly orange. This was not the smile that I’d used countlessly on my family, my friends, at parties, at school. This smile was happy.

One night I showed the scars littering my hips and wrist to a boy and instead of cringing or questioning he leaned down and kissed them. That color’s a tough one to describe. Poets have been falling short of it for centuries.

Little things triggered small bouts of color. These were soon overpowered and washed away by the bleakness until I was able to remember what it was like to see the world saturated in intensity. I remembered it’s better that way. It was hard at first, trying to adjust my mind to it. I was so accustomed to hearing good news and forcing a smile. So used to drowning the pain until there was none. I had to throw myself back into life, engaging my mind in every possible way. I spent more hours volunteering. I stopped faking emotions, stopped saying things I didn’t mean and most importantly, I let myself live. To live is something we define too loosely, I think. It’s not to breathe or talk or party. To live is to view every color at its brightest.

Not all of the colors that I’ve learned to see again have been pleasant ones. There’s the dark green when I’m taking a test and don’t know the answer, the muck brown when I forget my self-worth. And red. There’s a red so bright it burns me when I see suffering that I can’t help. Contrasting colors create a neutral just as contrasting feelings create a balance. I’ve learned never to wish the pain away or we might just lose the happiness, too. Finding my way back to it, coloring in my numbness, has been one of the hardest and most rewarding experiences of my life.