Thoughts on the color blue

Green used to be my favorite color. It always has been. I like green because it takes me to the forest. A lush forest. As a child I grew up by a forest. You can escape in a forest. Climb trees and get lost in the damp, fresh smell. Deep nuances of green. Each leaf its own world, with its own story. Seriously, zooming in on a leaf is such a trippy experience. Strings, veins, stilks, bark, moss! It's life. It's growth. And they keep going and going - they suck you in to a universe of endless nuances of green.

But recently I find myself attracted to blue. I've never given my favourite color much thought, but I've noticed that I've started to actively avoid green. Isn't that weird?  Who just changes favourite color? (Q to self: are adults even supposed to have favourite colours?) But yeah, now I'm all about blue. Klein blue! A deep, clean blue. The one you can look into and disappear.

Ugh, fuck, suddenly I feel really sad. I don't even know why I'm typing this… Wah! My fingers are just running over the keyboard like they're the ones picking these words? I feel weird and heavy. My boyfriend and I are on a 'break' (whatever that means). It's a unilateral break, as I had no say in the matter. I don't know when or if this break will end. Maybe it's actually a break up? I'm in limbo. I'm overthinking everything. I know what I want, and that's him, but at this point it's not up to me. 

My eyes have gotten increasingly red over the past week and I'm tired. My body is exhausted. And I don't look good. I can see it myself. No matter what I do with make up, splashes of water, pinches on my cheeks, it's clear that I'm unwell. I have this grey undertone and my eyes are puffy, they look smaller. It's like my windows to the world are shrinking. As if I'm being asked to look inwards instead of seeking distractions outside. But it's so hard! Ugh, I end up at home and alone, anaesthetising myself with Netflix and podcasts... I feel my body a lot and I stretch and I breathe. I can feel sorrow. It's a quiet sorrow - not the kind that makes me scream, nothing that makes me cry intensely, nothing that explodes. But it's so hard to tap into the pain. Instead, I just have to bear this constant knot at the center of my chest, making me crouch down and curl up. It prevents me from feeling any joy, like a constant grey sky wrapped around my heart.

The other day I received really good news, and I could see on paper that it was amazing news and it should thrill me, but I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel excited, I didn't smile. I just stared into a wall. I'm feeling saaaad. I'm blue! Huh. Is that why people call it "feeling blue"??

Blue is cold. Blue is the color my Chinese Medicine doctor saw on my tongue. Blue is the color I'm currently attracted to and the color I want to dive into. The color I want to float in, the place in which I want to meditate. I am blue. I'm forgotten. I'm irrelevant. I lack closure. Fuck you! It's like a big colorless wound that I'm attempting to cover with Klein. As if that would make it better… Would I bleed blue? Only one creature on the planet has blue blood. It's a special type of crab, called a horseshoe crab and it's blood is very expensive.

I was on a date yesterday (how brave am I ?!), I told him about the crab and he told me about 'Bluets' by Maggie Nelson. Yeah, we talked about the color blue a lot. We spoke about 'everything and nothing' and both resonated with that phrase. He's half Lebanese and half Italian. He's traveled a lot and he's adventurous, impulsive and very present. He listens to 'Are you lonesome tonight?' by Elvis because of an episode of Revisionist History where they discuss Elvis' grief. I've listened to that exact episode and could finish his sentences. It was actually one of my most played songs in 2018 (Spoootify knows). I told him about the podcast 'Radiolab' and it turns our that he was regular listener himself. He asked about my favorite composer and as I told him 'Debussy', he coincidentally had my favorite Debussy song pinned as a tab. It was his go-to soothing symphony as well. We shared a lot of interests and had a lot in common.

I sat opposite him with red eyes and big blue bags underneath them. I had blue paint all over my hands and legs, because I'd been sitting on my floor, painting when he texted me and asked if I wanted to meet up. When I received his message I literally stood up, put on a coat and headed out to meet him. I didn't even have makeup on and I turned up with messy hair. He just smiled and he didn't ask questions. Thank you for not asking any questions. 

On paper it was wonderful. For a second I saw a glimpse of hope; a glimpse of the colourful spectrum of life I used to bathe in before blue spilled over my entire canvas. A no-matter-how-this-ends-I'll-be-alright kind of hope. Which was much needed. Yet, I didn't feel it. I didn't feel joy. It was an experience of facts, empty of emotions... Come back my love. Why can't you feel us?

Ah, if everything was blue there wouldn't be so much stimulation, so much room for overthinking. There are too many colours right now! Why can't everything just be blue? If everything was blue, then layers and shadows would simply be nuances and we wouldn't even know that it was blue to begin with, you know? We wouldn't have to talk about it. We would feel it in our stomachs. It would just be.

Like love! When you just know deep in your heart and stomach that you love someone. Like I do with you.

People always associate love with the color red. Love is not red to me, I actually don't think it ever has been. Hm… Damn, It's green! Love is green to me! Yum. Love is green, like a big lush forest that you can get beautifully lost in.

Wow, and now I'm out of love. Forced out of love... I'm hurt. I feel irrelevant and insignificant. Maybe that's why I'm attracted to blue?