Colors of the Rainbow
by Meredith Nash
Sometimes it feels like my insides are on the outside. Like everything's flipped. I want to call this dissociation, that’s what my girlfriend calls it. When you feel like outside of your body. But I don’t. I feel like my skin is weighing me down and I’m more aware of my body, more aware I have a hang nail tearing down the side of my thumb. More aware my lip is splitting. More aware my shoes are one size too small. Sometimes I feel like I need to tense all my muscles or type really fast so my fingers cramp up. Is that anxiety? Should I not be able to breathe? I want to call this a panic attack, that’s what my father calls it. They’ll last maybe a few minutes, but then I’m in bed, and it’ll last a few hours. Sometimes it feels like I shouldn’t feel it. I’m not sure exactly what “it” is, but my father does. He knows what it feels like to go from mania to depression, to laying in bed and starving your insides. He knows what the inside of an insane asylum looks like. Sorry, not insane, just asylum. Sorry not asylum, just hospital, with bars on the windows. As if ending up tied to a bed in tears proves there’s something wrong inside. I have to prove my pain to my father, not because I need his approval because I’m really happy, I swear, I have two parents who are supporting me financially, a partner, a wonderful roommate, yet all my poetry is about depression and anxiety, and the way my knees move when my heart beats faster. I just want to know if the things I am feeling are all in my head.
When I was 16 and battling a relationship with my father, my therapist once told me to associate my emotions with colors when I couldn’t understand what I was feeling. I guess it works. But I’m not quite sure what I’m feeling now.
Red
Dad,
Did you know my skin turns bright red when I step out of the shower?
The precipitation dripping down the mirror, outlining my veins that lie deep within my appendages.
Did you know that coming out is like losing an appendage too?
Losing yourself
Your selflessness
You’re alienated.
Is to be selfless to be alienated?
I would never ask you something like that. Your face would probably be beat red if I did.
Like a
Tomato
Shirley temple
Papercut
Blood from the papercut
Blood
My mom's favorite shawl
I don’t think you notice much.
You don’t notice my skin turns red when I walk outside.
Or when I scratch my anxiety away.
Why would you notice I loved a woman?
Orange
You look like him, you know.
The man with the orange skin.
The monster with the fake tan.
The bigot.
And I’m not sure you quite understand why, mostly because you don’t understand me.
Yellow
I feel as though I have a mutual understanding with myself that most of my emotions stem from those who surround me.
Most of the time, it happens to be you.
When I see the sun, or its sister the sunflowers I never think of you.
I inhale fresher air, crisper, cleaning out my smoke infected lungs.
The color yellow is soft to me.
And I think there is beauty in being soft.
Beauty in having your heart cracked wide open, in vulnerability.
I know it allows you into the darkest of places.
But this is the one time where life isn’t about you.
Where I can exist in a world with a smile on my face and ignore that you once said only republicans are educated.
Green
I wrote a letter to you the other day. Mom mostly forced me to: it’s your 12 year anniversary of sobriety.
I am at peace knowing your anger no longer stems from liquid courage.
I am at peace for I finally shared my deepest secret. I know mom told you I was gay, I know I never got the chance to cuddle into your chest, apologizing for not wanting to tell you.
I am at peace because you are quiet when I bring my partner home. You ignore us when we hold hands and instead delve into conversation with my twin sister’s boyfriend.
I am at peace because we are at peace with each other. A silent agreement to be blood and nothing else.
Blue
I am crying today because you blamed me for getting myself raped.
I am sad today because the vodka I drank has condemned me and the vodka he drank has excused him.
Indigo
There is around a 20-40% variability rate in genetically passing down depression.
Luck of the draw.
Violet
I would love to name my child the last color of the rainbow.
But will it matter to you?
Will you be there?
A child born out of stuff in the sky.
A promise to finally feel okay.
White
I was sitting in my bathtub tonight
Contemplating why people choose to live or die
I turned the faucet on a little too hot so my feet and calves would become wrinkly and red.
It feels nice to lift them out of the hotter water to rest them on the side of the shower.
It felt so easy in that moment to question why I would live another day. Why should I live another day?
My therapist said this was just another emotion on the string of colors.
To know you have the ability to die but not quite the want
It’s okay to know you could end your life if it was what you wanted, but in the end remind yourself that life’s for the living not for the already half dead
But right now, I feel nothing, nothing at all. Do you?
Black
When you search for the color black you are abruptly corrected.
Black is not a color but rather an object that absorbs all the colors of the visible spectrum and reflects none of them to the eyes.
I imagine this is how it feels to feel everything at once. To not quite understand what you’re feeling.
You once told me it was easier to just feel than try to dissect what it actually was you were feeling. To cry if you had to, to yell if you needed to.
Maybe that’s what makes us so alike, our misunderstanding of our emotions. We’re both just trying to figure it out.