The best Christmas present I received this year was a pair of bright yellow Vans.

I love getting new shoes, it's almost like I have an addiction to buying a new pair of Vans every paycheck.

But this article isn't about shoes, it is about the color yellow.

Things that are yellow:

Sunflowers, rubber duckies, highlighters, lemons, bananas, legos, rain boots, the walls of my best friend's first house, a slug bug I see parked on the third floor in the parking garage every Thursday night, my favorite sweater that he always hated and the sky when the sun finally rises and I can start again.

Whenever I feel immense amounts of happiness run through my body, I feel yellow. It is the only color that brings immediate joy to my body and sends me into a spiral of bliss.

Those F's on my papers in high school never came in yellow and all I saw was black on the nights I couldn't sleep. I dyed my hair blue but it ended up fading away and I tried to see the positive in purple but all I saw was bruises. Green reminded me of vomit and brown kept telling me I wasn't shit. I never found my color until one day it found me.

Someone once told me that I remind them of yellow because I bring light into their life. It's almost as if a color could represent what I wanted to be, a light. Please do not cremate me into a flashlight and tell everyone it is a metaphor because that is not my intentions. When I say I want to be a light I mean that one day I want someone to look me and say they found hope in living because of me. I want to shine so badly that everyone will be able to see their own worth. As if becoming the color yellow will allow me to finally be able to help other people.

Yellow is creative, yellow is fun, yellow is a dreamer.

I believe that to be the color yellow you must know inside yourself that you are worth something more than a simple life. That you are here on this earth to grow and spread love to all around you. Being yellow is being driven and determined for something so much more.

Yellow is happiness and I won't stop until everyone around me reaches a peaceful bliss.