Does Beauty Live in Broken Shades of Grey?

Everyone says it’s a miracle I’m alive, but I can’t imagine anything much worse. Each day, I give thanks to that car crash for the pain it bestowed upon me. For the sickening sympathy from friends and family. For the exhausted Uber lady who carelessly drove me to work every day just to rob me of my paycheck. And did I mention how the world wasn’t made by a god of creative beauty but rather printed on a thin, white paper from a HP LaserJet? As Frank Sinatra says, “That’s Life." Now I have to learn how to deal with it. With the pain. The brokenness. And the absence of beauty.

I thank my flipping car for everything.

My sister told me there’s a bright side to all this…but retracted the comment as if she had already hurt my feelings and triggered my PTSD one too many times. And she had. She still does. Every time I visit, she explains what colours she wears in the greatest of details. But I know her colours. She’s warm autumn. I was there when she got them done and could name every single shade from amber to gold and burgundy. The next day is when it happened. The day I got tossed into the vintage television and woke up to the world of Andy Griffith. That’s March 19^th, the day I went blind to beauty.

I sip my hot cup of light grey coffee, nearly burning my tastebuds for the third time today. Dark bitter brew with cream and two spoons of sugar. Just how I like it. The Starbucks siren knows me well…well enough to whip together my usual request, but not enough to understand the pain I endure every day in the office. And I’m not talking about The Office. If I was, I’d be laughing my butt off right now behind my little HR computer screen. But I’m not. Congratulations, optic nerve, you turned my world into a dull masterpiece of ambiguity.

I set my cardboard cup down on the black and white coaster and lackadaisically drag my hand around the desk until the textured mouse brushes my fingertips. An exasperated sigh escapes my lips, my eyelids blinking slowly under the weight of endless exhaustion. The cycle of work never ends. Click. Slide. Scroll. Click. Click again. Click. C L I C K. Click click click click click cli—

The screen freezes. My teeth clench and twang my jaw. Every inhalation drunkenly staggers to the escalating rhythm of an out-of-tune heart. Tap tap tap tap tap…my first two fingers can’t handle cold turkeying the addiction of rapidly passing time. I hold my breath as the seconds pass by. One. Two. Three. Four. Four is how many times the car flipped. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Nine is how many hours passed before waking in the sickeningly white hospital. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Twelve is the number of curse words I spat under my breath when the doctor introduced me to a monochrome world.

And I can thank my flipping car for that, too.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Exhaustion wrestles with my morals. Fight it. I have to fight it. Click. Click. Click. Click. The screen is still frozen. Tides of anxiety rise in my chest as my fingers tremble uncontrollably. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. I’m wasting time. Tick. Tick. Tick. I glance at the black clock hanging on the dingy wall; 12:43. No. It can’t be. I blink to reset my nearly blind vision; 12:43, tick, tick, tick. My tapping fingers leave damp prints on the desk. Like a fist winding back for attack, my chest tightens and clenches my lungs.

Thud. Thud.

Tap. Tap.

Tick. Tock.

Click. Click.

CRASH.

Orange sparks shower onto the hood. S c r e e c h. High-pitched shrill grating of metal-on-metal shrieks in my ears. Left. Right. The world spins on its axis. Orange flames aggressively fling from side to side. Thud. Crunch. My arm cracks and twists backward, bolts of lightning tearing up my bicep. Heat overwhelms me. Sweat pearls drip from my eyelashes. Thud. Thud. The blue sky rolls under my feet. Smoke. Fire. Run. But I’m trapped. My lungs painfully gasp for a breath and catch flying debris instead. Crack. Thwack. My forehead beats the steering wheel like a ragdoll. Everything turns a funky shade of black.

Click. Click.

Tick. Tock.

Tap. Tap.

Thud. Thud.

My heart beats like a drum in my chest. I lose a breath. The office. The grey. The frozen screen. Beads of sweat roll down my chin. It’s not real. None of it was real. The cream resting on top of my coffee trembles with the incessant jolting of my fingers. Breathe. Just breathe. I lean forward and rub my eyes awake. It was just a dream. Another nightmare. I stand up, dizzy, glance at the clock on my wall; 12:43. My arm bolts with lightning agony. Was it really a dream? I gently flex my fingers in hopes to find the line between imagination and traumatic recollections. A shot. It tears through my arm. Something’s not right. I’m here, but I’m still there. Still in the crash with my snapped arm and the whiplash of the tumbling. And time hasn’t moved. 12:43, the haunting moment of the accident.

I stumble to the window with the trembling cup of coffee in hand and gaze across the pencil drawn city. I see five cars parked next to the curb, one too close to the other. A family of four walk their dog to the park. I inhale, the scent of the dark brew wafting comfort in my nostrils. The soft, warm cardboard cup fits perfectly in the palm of my hand like puzzle pieces. I sip, sweet, bitter, and creamy all mapping themselves out onto my palette. And the silence. It’s soothing like ocean waves lapping up on the shore, the seagulls and palm trees waving “hello” in the breeze. No more tick tock tick tock. Just ambience and occasional gusts of wind that—

Buzzz…Buzzz…

My heart jolts. Vibrations from the phone ripples numbing sensations through the floor and into my leg. I set my coffee on the windowsill and rush to my desk. My spirits drop. It’s Hazel…my sister. Calling. For what? My hand reaches down, but I pause. To listen to the pity or revel in silence alone? I can’t stand the way she always backpedals around me, how she tries to act like nothing has changed when deep down everything is different in her eyes. But what about me? What about the way I have to wake up to a monochromatic world and fight signs of depression every second that passes just to live through a day? Whose sights have changed more? Mine or hers?

Buzzz….Buzzz…Buzzz…I have to do something. My hand reaches again, and the vibrations pulsate through my fingers. Just the sight of her name tenses my chest again, suffocates my heart from its relentless beating. I bite my lip. She was the first person to say something when I awoke, the first person to ask what I saw. I told her to switch on MeTV at seven that night and tell me. She got the message then and learned to shut up…but only for a while. When life seemed to swing back into normal action, she found every moment, fit and unfit, to spout about the monochromacy and describe colours so vividly to me like I hadn’t ever seen red or purple before. Maybe it’d be easier to live if she stopped finding places to yap on and on and cause the cascading effects of resurrecting trauma. And then, we both learned to shut up, to trap boiling differences and any means of escape. And since then, all has been quite…all until now.

My finger hesitantly glides over the screen, swipes the icon to the right and clicks the speaker phone. And then I wait. The little seconds underneath her name begin the cycle. One. Two. Three. Four. Fi—

“You there?”

I reluctantly spout a response: “Yeah, but why’d you call? It’s during work hours.”

“I just wanted to check up on you, see how you’re doing and all.” She pauses. A long, quiet, uncomfortable pause like she does before she’s about to erupt with comments regarding my views of the world. “But not just that…I was also wondering if you wanted to go to an art gallery with me…I got a membership there so…”

I set the phone back on the desk and walk as far to the other side of this little grey box as I can. It’s coming. I can feel it in the way she forms her sentences, inserting pauses and places of unforgotten distance between us. Hazel was never like this growing up. I wasn’t like this growing up. But that’s when I had the beautiful uplifting spirits of crayons rather than pencils.

I can thank my flipping car for how much it changed me. How much it changed us.

My chest tightens as I brush my fingers across the asphalt leaves of the plant in the dark corner of my office. “I might. Maybe.”

“Oh great!” The speaker crackles with her bright, overflowing excitement. “I’ll let you know what time. Oh finally!” She sounds relieved for some reason. “I didn’t think you’d be interested being that…you know…”

There it is again. The remark that drives a wedge between us. It’s like an addiction she can’t break free from. Ever since the accident, Hazel boasts her own little perspective juxtaposed with mine, slithers the poisonous comments to bite a chunk of my soul. It’s obvious. She’s in colour. I’m not. And why that matters so much to her? I wish I knew the answer.

“What? Like I can’t enjoy black and white paintings?” Smoke rises in my chest from the fire inside. She doesn’t understand. She’ll never understand. “It’s not like I’m blind, Hazel.”

“That’s not what I meant. I just—”

“You can’t go a single conversation without blabbering about it some way or another. You can’t even look at me the same knowing I’m just half as “blessed” as you are!” I spit the unfiltered lava off my tongue and stare blankly out the window. Her silence proves that I won the argument. Maybe now she’ll finally shut up about it and leave me alone.

“Jett…” Her voice shakes like the body of wounded warrior taking one last stance at the enemy. And then her breath staggers, crumples, and falls from her chest. More and more sharp inhalations shake the phone on my desk. “Jett, you don’t…” With every pause, she sucks in a breath and exchanges it for tears, “…you don’t know how…how much I went through when…when you…when you were in that accident.” Her tremors stab like knives passed my guarding armour.

My response fails. I open my mouth, but the right words are caught in my throat. My heart follows the gun shot that starts the race. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. My hands tremble and glisten with sweat. It’s happening again. I have to stop it…before it grows into a monster of vampire memories fueled by unwavering anxiety. But I can’t. My grounding methods fail. All I can taste is melting bitterness. All I hear is her shivering, tear-filled breaths. My eyes blur with rising tears. I smell the smoke from the fire inside. I feel the pain of heartbreak from the accident.

Hazel manages to sputter a fractured phrase: “I…just…wanted…to help you!” She inhales a teetering breath. “Not to hurt you…”

Like rain, her confession drenches my fire. I try to light the scorched the dwindling rage, to get revenge and win the argument fully, but every time she painfully exhales, the fuse blows out. It’s no use. She unveiled the very thing my life ever darkened. Her brightness spotlighted insecurity, and there’s nowhere to run. The scene is set. The stage is ready. All it needs is the audience.

I stare out into the whitewashed street. For the first time, silence bugs me. It eats away everything I deemed true and punches holes in my barriers. The demons I’ve buried for so long now rise in confrontation. I can’t hide from them any longer. My defences are shattered like glass around my feet. Thud. Thud. Here it comes again. Thud. Thud. What should I say? My clammy hands search desperately for something to clench. Thud. Thud. Thud. I freeze like my computer screen. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. My finger begins a rhythm on my thigh. Tap. Tap. Thud. Thud. Tap. Thud. Tap. Thud. She broke me. I have to face it. Face the fear. Face the memory. She was the first person to say something when I woke up. Now, her solemn face haunts me as I read the mirrored expression. We’re both in the hospital. Hurt. Broken. Dying to beauty. Tap. Tap. Thud. Thud. She was just trying to make things right. And I was the one who raised my sword and shield against her and screamed war cries in the night…with the wind in my face and ashes tainting my vision. She was just an innocent girl. I’m the one who threw the first punch.

Tick. Tock.

She’s waiting for a response.

Tick. Tock.

I turn around slowly, my eyes gazing over the shaded room and finally falling on the black phone on my desk. The seconds are still counting. Tension prickles in my chest. I take a step toward the desk. My hands tremble. Another step brings me closer. She’s there, waiting on the other end, silence killing me more. Step. Step. I have to say something. Step. Step. There she is. Her name on the screen in front of me, the seconds building and building. My hand shivers uncontrollably as it inches closer. Anxiety beats my chest. The smooth surface brushes my fingertips. I pick up the phone, shaking, sweating, barely breathing. She audibly sucks back tears, waiting, watching, wondering if I’m still there. I press the speaker button off and bring the phone up to my right ear. It quivers and taps my cheek.

I try to formulate some grand gesture of apologies like Shakespeare, but nothing rolls off my tongue. The words hide from me like I’m the villain. What should I say? Every emotion mixes uncontrollably like pouring paints, and I’m left in the rawness of their dark combination. I choke on the words releasing in my throat: “I’m…sorry.”

And then I melt. Blue sobbing rattles my bones. It’s over. No more double lives in a wounded heart. I crumple into my office chair, shaking uncontrollably as the orange discomfort of anxiety releases its grip on my soul. I can’t stop the cascading of red heartbreak, the pure white acknowledgment of bitterness and green deceit. But on the other side, Hazel radiates a pink hue of forgiveness and unconditional love. It’s as if she knew this the whole time and was waiting for the moment I’d let go of the dark brewing bitterness. And there, she waits. Distant, but by my side, sitting in the moment as I come face to face with fear. The walls I built crumble, and she enters into my heartbreak like an angel. Waiting. Watching. Knowing how it feels like to be rejected and still endlessly giving.

The rivers of tears down my cheeks dry up, leaving a salty residue on my skin. The phone lowers from my ear and lightly falls onto the grey desk. Hazel is still quiet, hasn’t said a word since…and I understand all her reason why not to. She witnessed every broken part of me, even the wounds that haven’t seen light in years. She finally understands what it feels like to be trapped in darkness, isolated, lonely, and cold to the bone. I shiver, the sweat cooling on my skin. Over the phone, I hear Hazel’s shuffle like she’s preparing to say something again. The air tenses as I wait for her response.

“Jett…” Her voice quakes. She’s finally letting go too. “I didn’t mean to make things worse for you…just when it happened…I was afraid, I…didn’t know what else to do.” She sheds a few tears in her breaths. “You were so broken, and all I wanted was for you to see beauty again.”

I exhale slowly to catch my emotion. Whether she knows it or not, she just did exactly that. In the heartbreak, anxiety, trauma, and guilt, she invited me into an art gallery of everything I lost after the accident, just in a different perspective of the nature of beauty.

I walk slowly over to the window and stare out at the pencil drawn city, a tear escaping down my cheek. Everything is just as it was, perfectly imperfect like the turmoil inside. The bank across the street standing next to a quaint little clothing store. The cars parked parallel to the curb, one a little too close to another. Nothing changed, but everything looks so different. Living in a vintage television might not be so bad after all; it just takes time to get used to imperfections.

I gaze into the city, the rawness of my fragmented existence becoming clearer and clearer like each individual shade of grey. Time will tell when I’m alright…if I’m ever alright, that is. This looming sense of powerlessness weighs down my shoulders. Trauma is like a tattoo on my brain; that’ll never change. The world is still bleak out there, black and white and shades of grey; that’ll never change either, not if my optic nerve has anything to say about it. All I know is my sister, my mom, dad, family…they might be right. Maybe living is a miracle after all…or else I wouldn’t see beauty in shades of grey.