To colour or not to colour

I am constantly on the precipice between wanting to find what makes me feel alive and becoming more acquainted with death

My therapist asks me: what colour are you feeling right now?

A peculiar question, a senseless blending of senses

All my mind can process in response is an unexcited, lulled shade of

nothing,

with orangey tints

When tip-toeing such a precipice, one sees the world's true colours

And begins to lose faith in what they see

So, when I am tasked with breathing in a colour I want to keep and breathing out a colour I would like to release (A “grounding” exercise they call it)

I feel a deep dissonance churning away inside

a lumpy lacquered machine at the foot of my gullet

An intense groundlessness

You know when I was young, I was embarrassed to wear bright colours

I was embarrassed to even wear warm pastel colours

I thought that wearing these colours would expose me in an undefinable way to the whims of the world

Not only did colourful clothing not feel right, they left me with an uncomfortable disposition

One of being seen when all I felt was invisible

I just learned about the colour wheel, that one is a doozy!

Who knew that one of the complimentary colours for purple was green???

The two most outstanding colours combined to compose the most ostentatious combination of traits

I never understood the true value of colours, their compliments especially, because I never trusted, or was rather scared of what they could do and mean

I tried colourful trial and errors as I grew older

I started wearing purple

First on a date

Then on a casual walk with my dog

And then next thing you know my entire room

became the colour I was once so fearful of,

teamed with accents of emerald and sage greens

that would absolutely mortify the person I feel I was and …. am now

I mean, if green is the colour of embarrassment and violet the colour of shy chaos, I guess I wear these colours proudly at times?

People ask me sometimes what my favourite colours are, I respond hastily,

“the peaks of the sunset!”

“Purple, green, gold, pink!”

But I don’t know for certain

To wake up and not know life

Is to be marvelled by colours but feel always foreign to them

When I was younger, I didn’t wear colours

Now, when I’m older and I’m tasked with using colours to interpret my emotions,

I draw as stiff and blank as an off-white piece of card stock paper

The dry, yet flashy, cymbals and exorbitant orchestra of The Office theme song playing in my head while I fail at this fathoming

Frankly, the world itself seems largely void of colour to me most times

But still

there is a deep sense of yearning

gnawing away as I become more

A yearning to wear the violets of the world, dance in pompous green dresses, relish in the occasional golden tux, and dye my hair hot pink, with streaks of flowery corals and ornamental silvers

To walk along the sunset as if I were its compliment

And feel everything