These Colors Came From You.

My palette was born clean, untouched, pristine.

Ready to hold the colours of your love, your warmth and safety.

Totally dependent,

my palette sat, expectant.

But it seemed those paints of yours had run dry,

I tried to tempt them, tried to earn these shades of care and adoration.

But they slipped away without a mention.

Instead you drowned me in a thousand shades of red, angry and distressed,

and those blues crashed through like waves, and made me feel as though I couldn’t move.

They swirled and clashed and overflowed, dripping off the edge onto the floor.

Far too much for me to hold. My palette, cold.

Learning, this way was the only way.

Years passed in a storm of heartbreaking blacks and crushing greys.

I was powerless to the power of your paint.

Your colours the only colours that I knew,

as you painted my world view.

But soon, I began to grow, the progress, slow at first

but then came those years where it really starts to fly,

out with friends every night.

Old enough to find my feet, I tried to wipe it clean, keen to create my own palette.

For the weight of your paint was not something I could manage.

I tried to overwrite the many days and nights in which you shaped me.

It felt like time to ask, if I could choose my colours, what shade would I paint me?

I lunged for sunshine daisy yellows, breezy greens and oranges that spark a friendly fire of intrigue.

Desperate not to let the palette you had made, define me.

But these carefree colours I had chosen could not last.

Your grasp still thick, your paint still glistening, and wet, ready to stick.

I tried to keep my new shiny colours separate,

but yours came clawing at the edges and bit by bit they overtook,

every splash and every nook.

Until there was no distinguishing colour.

Just a mess that someone else had left.

It felt like drowning.

I moved away, but still your colours stayed.

Trying to remind me of my place, and shape my face.

Trying to determine the relationships I chased, and those I pushed away.

This palette was my everyday.

Longing to escape, I tried to put this palette down, and pick up another.

Tried to leave it all behind without addressing what had happened,

how I’d managed,

and the fact that this palette I’d inherited was damaged.

Every new palette I chose looked the same,

clean at first, but within days I’d begin to see the startings of your stains.

No matter what I tried, these colours of yours were not something I could hide.

I stopped, I faced the tide. I cried, and cried and cried.

And the less I tried to run, the more the colours you placed, hardened.

They became my base.

A dry crust, solid, at least on the surface.

And that was enough to breathe, to begin to heal.

To take my time to consider, what colours do I need?

No longer a frantic teen grappling with growing up

and the ever dangerous side of your love.

I finally had time to create me.

And to realise, these colours that you gave, are what make me unique.

I could never wipe this palette fully clean.

I can scrub and pray and meditate but still there will be the colours you chose.

The good and the bad.

And it is all completely different to the palette sat next to me, and the one next to that.

This goes on forever, no two the same.

All of these colours that are mine sit a different shade or mix from the paint sat on another’s.

Your colors were painful, harmful,

made me ache,

and at times made me feel this world was not my place.

But now, I wear this base with pride,

as I choose my colours that sit on top,

and I paint my way through life.