Maybe favourite colours are for me after all

“What’s your favourite colour?” 

“I don’t know…”

“...”

“if I have to choose, I guess, Purple?”

“Cool, mine is blue”

“that’s nice!”

* you have blocked this user *

What a stupid conversation to have every time I decide it might be time to try again. What an irrelevant topic when coming from “Our bedding will be green to go with those white scatter cushions you like so much” and “Would you use the shower if it had green tiles in?”. What a redundant discussion when every dress I own is purple or light-blue.

It definitely wasn’t the first text that asked this, nor was it the second. But somewhere between number three and seven I realised that maybe this might not be for me. Maybe starting over isn’t for me. Or maybe, favourite colours just aren’t for me. 

I had dread this question my whole life. At first, it started because pink felt too girly, but god forbid I liked blue because only boys like blue and everything else was too bright or too common or too generic. And then one day I was tired of thinking and black just became the easy answer since it was all I could see in my life, but the same response always followed: “black isn’t a colour”. So I chose grey, since it’s the closest, just as lifeless but less technical. 

But then the day came when he had asked me, and I truthfully said “I don’t know, I’ve never really had one…what about yours?”, and the reply came almost instantly, “it might sound strange but purple :)”. 

How funny is it that it’s three years later and I dread that question just as much, but this time, for so many different reasons. 

Because if I really thought about it I would pick red, because it was the colour of his shirt when he woke me up in the hospital that day. But then I would remember how beautifully brown those eyes are when they look at me like I hold all the secrets of life. And I’d hear his calming voice tell me how beautiful I look when I wear orange. Just to close my eyes at the memory of those bright yellow tulips he was so nervous to give me before our unofficial first date. Not forgetting my stress levels as I watched his tall figure running around on those green rugby fields countless times, praying that none of it gets hurt. Still thinking about it, I would probably say the blue of the skies we’ve made so many memories under. But then there’s the purple of every lavender stem he brought me from their garden on hard days. Not to mention the bright pink that reminds me of all the protein bars his kind heart brought me when I forgot to eat. And every time I do my nails, I think it might be white because of how crazy it drove him or of how incredibly beautiful all those white flowers he gave me were. Or maybe the black of the night-sky under which we danced without music, just for two more minutes together. But maybe it’s the grey of the clouds on all the rainy days we went out. Gold had never been an option but it would be because of all the “golden” tequila shots illegally thrown back as music drowns out all forms of worry or reality in that club we always lost ourselves in. Silver would be the obvious choice, but it had only been made clearer by the silver initial around my neck, that had been protecting me since that one winter-morning he decided it was “about time that everyone could see who my heart belonged to”.

*

It was always so stupid to me when people told me white and black aren't colours, and yes, I do know. I know that scientifically white is the lightest combination of all the colours on the spectrum. And I know that black is simply the absence of light.

But no one warned me that it would be all I saw once my brain encapsulated the news of the accident. That one that changed everything. That one, on the night that every ounce of light got smothered and every single colour in existence got smeared together as my heart tried to make sense of it. Not succeeding nonetheless. No one warned me that the absence of light would will the air from my lungs as some guy tried to keep me from falling to the floor as he told me what had happened. In a bar, of all places. I wonder if he could imagine how that felt.

Everyone always corrected me but no one ever thought to warn me of its suffocating qualities, how silly of them for forgetting to do that. How silly of that boy to forget that a bar might not have been the place to talk about shattering glass and totalled cars. How silly of him to not think of all the colours that he had just thrown together in my mind simply by putting five words together. How incredibly silly of him to think that holding my hand would make my legs feel stronger.

*

I had always thought so deeply about every question I was asked, but never seemed to value being asked about my favourite colour. Until this one gorgeous, beautifully kind boy asked me on a random Saturday afternoon. Then all of them slowly and inevitably started flowing back to him, and honestly, I couldn’t get myself to be upset about it even if I tried.

How funny is it that it’s three years later and I dread that question just as much, but this time, for so many different reasons and with so much more love for the overwhelming grief that come as the heart-warming rainbows of him. 

Because if I really thought about it this time, I still won’t have one. But I don’t think that I’d believe it’s because favourite colours aren’t for me. I will, however, wholeheartedly believe that starting over isn’t for me. And that this, in fact, is not for me, because only he ever was.

So when number eight comes, I will smile faintly or maybe even laugh about it as I wipe a tear from my cheek. And maybe, just maybe, I will be brave enough to reply with “All of them”.