There are many colors associated with love, and when someone is told to think of a color to go with that emotion, most people would probably say pink or red, warmer colors. When it’s around Valentine’s Day, the stores are bursting with those colors, and by the end of February you’re sick of seeing them. But to me, love isn’t red or pink. It’s the color I see every time I look at her.

Love is the color of her eyes, that sparkle when the light hits them just the right way. Her eyes, that I see every day, sometimes shining with laughter, other times shining with tears. Her eyes, that look like they hold the whole world in them. Her eyes were one of the first features I ever noticed about her. In eighth grade, when we first met, we never talked. Yet, at the end of the school year when I was getting something out of my locker, she walked past. We locked eyes, and she smiled. Then, she asked if she could sign my yearbook. For weeks, she was the only person I could think about, but eventually I stopped. We moved onto high school and I thought I had completely forgotten about her. 

Then I went to homecoming, and I saw her with her boyfriend. Her eyes, oh her eyes. They were shining, and every time she looked at him they held the love I could only wish was for me.  Second semester of freshman year we had a study hall together. We never really talked to each other, and we sat on opposite sides of the band room. All of the other kids in my study hall went to the library or stuffed themselves into the two practice rooms, so the only people in the room were me, my two friends, Karsten and Joseph, and her. One day, she came to study hall crying. I felt that it was my duty to comfort her, because I was the only other girl there. I went over to her and saw how her tears made her eyes so much lighter. That was the day I noticed how beautiful she was, even though I should have been focusing on helping her through her breakup. After that, we became best friends, practically inseparable.

She made me see the true color of love, but she also showed me the color of sadness. Just like with love, most people would think of one color when told to think of a color associated with sadness. The true color of sadness is the dark color of the sky right before a storm. Sadness is the color of the deepest waters of the ocean. Everyone knows what the traditional color of sadness is. She let me see that sadness was the same color as love, at least for me. 

We dated for almost two months, from August 20th to October 12th, 2015. Those two months were some of my happiest. But just three days after my birthday, my emotional color pallette took a turn. Instead of seeing the world in brighter, warmer hues, everything just looked sad and bleak. She broke up with me. Through text. It was a stab to the heart. I was absolutely devastated. How could I be anything but? The girl I had loved long before we started dating had just torn me in two. While she was living her life, acting as if she hadn’t destroyed the happier person I was with her, I was miserable. I was feeling really down, but I didn’t want her to see. I couldn’t let her see how weak she had made me. And the thing that hurt the most was that she seemed happier not being with me. I didn’t want to spread the color I was living in. I pretended to see the world  in the same colors she did. 

You see, I believe everyone has one person that brings out the best in you. That one person who lets you see your true colors. And for me, she was that person. I was perfectly well off without her, and I would probably be an overall happier person if I had never fallen in love with her, if I had never let her break my heart. If I had never let her show me what it was like to truly question anything and everything. Maybe I would have found another person to love, who made me see the world in various shades of purple, or met someone who showed me life as if everything were yellow. I should be able to see the world in every color;  the rainbow is kinda my thing. But instead, I let her confine me to the color of sadness. That’s not a bad thing though. Because if you see life in red, orange, yellow, green, and purple, everything would eventually blur together and turn an unsettling shade of brown. And who would really want that? Every day I tell myself to stop being sad, to stop seeing the color she hardwired me to see in. I shouldn’t be forced to see that color and think only of her. I should take that color and toss it to the side. I should start living life in a color of my own choosing.

It’s been over a year since she showed me my true colors. And if I was ever really going to change my color, I would have done it by now. I think I’m okay with it, this color that has taken over every part of me, the color that has painted my soul. It’s something that I can’t get rid of, no matter how much I scrub at it, trying to make it go away. There are days when I want my heart to be pink again, not the inky color that it is. Other days, I embrace it with my full body. This ink is permanent, and there is no getting rid of it.