Her favorite color

Raya sat in her room, eyeing the dull piece of paper that read a list of questions to answer for a class assignment. The first question would be seen as easy to most, but the second she laid eyes on it, ants ran through her limbs, and a weight sat on her chest. She managed to finish the rest of the assignment before going back to the seemingly insignificant question.

What is your favorite color?

She sat there, pen in hand, the world being a swirl of washed out colors around her. The vividness began to increase the more frustrated she became. Truth be told, Raya didn’t have a favorite color. In the world Raya lived in, colors and emotions worked and flowed together, and Raya had never been good with her emotions. Picking a color that she liked would be a task, one she really did not want to deal with. Her thoughts soon changed as her frustration grew, and she was well aware of what was coming next.

Soon her world was tinted in shades of blue. Her black pen became a navy hue, her assignment turned to stone blue, and her skin became the blue of denim. Her initial reaction, like always, was to close her eyes and sit with the darkness. To escape the influx of color. Instead, She took a moment and sat with it, eyes open.

What did she feel when she looked at blue, she thought. The midnight blue she sat in reminded her of sad movies, waking up with a headache, and arguments that led to scream fights. The memories puddled around her as the blueness waterboarded her. The tear that hit her assignment gleamed in an almost transparent blue. She watched the next tear as it fell beside the old one. That blue reminded her of butterflies. Butterflies were so pretty and dainty, she mused. She really liked butterflies. She turned around in her desk, to look at the room. In a world where colors of things changed frequently, there wasn’t a point of painting anything. Her room was white and the items in it were all either white or black. That’s what she was told, and honestly it did not matter, because they were never that color when she was around.

The longer she sat, the lighter the blues became. She saw a blue brighter than ever in the walls around her. It felt like field day in elementary school. Like playing mermaid in a pool on a Saturday. Like sitting outside and listening to chirping birds . As a memory of her having ice cream with friends crossed her mind, her room began to twist into a variety of purples. 

She liked purple more than blue, she thought in that moment. It was easy to; she didn’t see purple too often. She saw it usually when she was creating art or listening to music. She also experienced it once after getting a standing ovation at a recital. It was her first ever recital, and she didn’t make any mistakes. She was so proud of herself, and the fact that the audience enjoyed it too made it mean so much more to her. The walls were a color close to a pale purple with mixtures of lilac, although flashes of electric purple flashed around her as she relived that moment. As she brought her eyes back to the now lavender paper in front of her, She began to write down purple.

As she went to write down the second ‘p’, the paper shifted to a light orange. She really did like orange too. She experienced her world doused in oranges like Princeton and dark orange during moments including scarily fun roller coasters and eating her favorite foods. Just the thought of it turned the peach tint in her room into a tangerine. Her memories with orange were always good; well except when she got startled, then a fire-like orange would flash at her. It would stick with her too, for a few hours or so if she got really scared.

The thought about eating her favorite foods earlier prompted Raya into getting something to eat. Maybe filling her stomach would somehow help her with the question, she thought. In reality, she was just hungry. 

She brought a sandwich she made back to her room. The colors had faded back to a usual dull mixture, but then she took a bite of the sandwich and her world erupted in a moss green. She spat out the bite and dropped the sandwich on the plate. She took out the crocodile colored tomatoes from her sandwich. They were a bit too slimy for her liking. She liked this green as much as she liked the midnight blue. She didn’t. Green not only brought her back to gross foods, but it suffocated her when she embarrassed herself and lingered in moment’s she’d rather forget. 

She grew angry with herself as the green around her took over. She had always been like that; not being able to keep her emotions at a soft easy level or always having to feel things so strongly. Maybe it was because of the world she lived in, or maybe it was just her. Everyone around her seemed to handle their colors with poise and control, but she always struggled with it. Red bled through the room as the nasty tomato was quickly forgotten. 

Instead she was stuck thinking about murdering everyone who had ever made her feel inadequate. Oh wow, she thought to herself. She knew that was extreme, evident by the mahogany and crimson around her taking more of a blush tint. She took a deep breath. She can’t say she hated red. Anytime she saw red it was because her heart rate increased, for better or for worse. Her mind flashed to someone she’d been infatuated with recently. Alluring moments flickered through her head as rose and cherry did the same in the room around her. 

Soon she began to think about the person even more. Not about their lips or waist anymore, but about their smile and loving words. She reminisced about them coming over on one of her blue days with their strong yellow. Bringing herself back to reality, she wasn’t surprised to see the room the color of the sun— the one in the sky and the one in her mind.

She smiled as she crossed off purple completely. It was yellow. She loved yellow; although as she ruminated, the colors got duller and darker, twisting into an almost muddy gray. That always happened after the yellow. The happiness never lasted, and insecurity and inadequacy were always there lurking, ready.

Why was this so difficult? Just pick a color, she thought to herself. Her emotions morphed into something familiar but distressing as the colors she couldn’t stand flashed around her. She was feeling too much. The colors began to take over and she did what she wanted to do in the beginning. 

She closed her eyes.

She immediately relaxed. That absence of color was so nice. This is what she always wished for. No color. And maybe it was that easy all along. Black. The ‘color or not’ argument had always been prevalent in her world, but it really didn’t matter to her. She scribbled down black with her eyes still closed. 

She thought about all the colors she just saw while working on this assignment. She thought about both the comforting and upsetting emotions that took over. Then she thought about the colors that represented those emotions. All the colors were beautiful, she knew that. And she really did enjoy purple, orange, and yellow the most. Perhaps, she could choose one of those. But none of them came close to the peace of not having to deal with it at all— especially in a world where it bombards everyone all the time. 

She put away the assignment and went to bed. The few seconds before the vivid dreams started were her favorite moments.