Purple and Million Greys

“Purple,” my mother had repli­­ed when I asked her the color of my new dress. I giggled and twirled around the house, catching my reflection in every mirror and trying to imagine what the color purple could possibly look like. At the young age of five, my world existed only in shades of blacks, whites and greys.

“One day you’ll see,” she promised me, repeating the same thing everyone had been telling me for years, “the day you meet your soul mate, your world will explode into a rainbow of colors and it’ll be the most amazing, overwhelming feeling you’ve ever experienced.”

Not just “the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen”, but “experienced”. I held onto her words like a lifeline, drawing rainbows with the crayons she laid out for me even though I saw nothing but grey. My best friend, who ended up marrying her high school sweetheart, tried to describe color to me in ninth grade. For her, it wasn’t only a new perspective on life, but hundreds of different emotions. She once held two roses up to me- one yellow and the other a pale pink, she said- both of which seemed to be near identical greys to me, and explained how the yellow was a burst of happiness and the pink was a flood of love and sighs.

While I just rolled my eyes and smiled, not truly believing her love-crazed heart eyes, seeing color was something I never stopped waiting for. No matter what I did, no matter how perfect a moment seemed, a small piece of me couldn’t help imagining every occasion infinitely better in color.

Then it happened, in a day that I could only describe as the happiest of my life. At an overly extravagant family party, I met my soul mate, Kirt, who happened to be catering the event in a dashingly handsome suit and tie. It was also the day I met my unexpected best friend, Barry, whose arm was looped reluctantly with my sister’s: her newest conquest in a never-ending series of partners. He wore a twisted smile, one that appeared genuine to my sister and anyone glancing past, but from my place, could only be described as insincere.

I talked to my family through gritted teeth and forced smiles, sharing hidden snickers with Barry at my sister’s incessant picky eating and stealing moments of secret smiles with Kirt. The more we talked, hiding essays of meaning into a few small phrases as he brought hors d'oeuvres and drinks, the more I could feel my heart being stolen from my chest.

Gradually the purse I was holding on to transformed into a rosy pink, the twisting intricate vines around the garden bloomed in greens and yellows, and the sparkles on my dress cast a thousand tiny rainbows across the white tablecloth. In the moment that I had only dreamed of a million times before, I realized no words or descriptions could’ve prepared me for the awe of seeing color for the first time. It was like I had been living in a two-dimensional world all my life but the color that was introduced allowed me to see in three dimensions, an entirely new universe. Kirt looked over at me with a knowing grin, matching my delight as I twirled around the tables, hand over mouth in awe, thirsty to soak in every blade of grass and flower petal.

The next two years of my life were lived in utter bliss, as if the color had magically solved every other problem in my life. I’d arrived at the party on the verge of being homeless, destined to spend the next Valentine’s Day alone. But after spontaneously moving in with Barry on friendly terms and spending most of my waking hours falling deeper in love with Kirt, it was as if I had everything I could ever want. I suddenly went from having no one to having two people I could pour my heart out to, whenever I wanted. Even more than that, I got to see the world how every fortunate, head-over-heels-in-love, person got to see it: in color.

Every day, I walked through the same town that I had grown up in for over 20 years, marveling at the same streets I had walked so many times, seeing everything in a new light. The cobblestone alleys weren’t just a simple “grey” as my mother had described when I bugged her about it for the twentieth time, but tinted blue with flecks of yellow and brown. The local library was a museum of color, the spine of every book a slightly different hue.

My Sundays were spent strolling around with my grandmother, whose world had been returned to black and white following the unfortunate death of her late husband, with me rambling on about everything visible in our line of sight. No matter how far or near I travelled, I never stopped discovering new colors, newfound interests and new perspectives on things I would’ve just glazed over a few years ago.

Everything was perfect; I could learn, see, and love no matter where I was. I'd finally found the one thing that everyone searches for: love.

Then it all changed.

I was holding a gorgeous red rose that Kirt had sent to my office, when the color suddenly started fading away: the crimson petals, then the green stem and leaves. Panic set in and I rubbed my eyes furiously, blinking and spinning around the room as everything seemed to start disappearing: the blue binders, yellow sticky notes and multicolored pens all faded away to a grey that felt like a stab in the heart from a long ago wound. The dreadful grey scale world was all too familiar, yet at the same time, it felt like another lifetime that I hadn’t even been a part of.

My mind immediately went to Kirt; his death would be the only possible way to explain this. Racing across the sidewalk to the firm where he worked, I burst through the door, heaving and panting, my eyes searching wildly for the only person I wanted to see at the moment.

And there he was, sitting at his desk, hands hovered above his keyboard diligently, his eyes staring up at me, filled with confusion and worry.

“I- I can’t see color anymore,” I managed to stutter out in a panic. I kept looking around the room, hoping it was all just a fluke and the shades of rainbow would return to the depressing prison my world had become, but nothing changed.

“What? That doesn’t make sense, honey,” he took my hands in his, as comforting and perfectly soft as ever, “that would only happen if your soul mate died and… the colors you brought into my world are as perfect and vibrant as they have ever been.”

I shook my head, not comprehending. Muttering some excuse about needing to lie down, I walked back to my car, and drove home to my apartment in a daze. Everything was so different; I had to stare twice as hard at every building and road sign, as if I’d been wearing contacts for two years and just now took them off for the first time. It was a grey, miserable world I prayed I would never have to return to again.

Arriving back at my apartment almost subconsciously, I immediately recognized the unmistakable logo of an ambulance, with two men racing into a burning building shouting hysterics: my burning building. My home, my life, was going up in flames.

For a second, I was still too focused on the grey of the previously red and blue flashing lights, and the grey of what would have been orange and yellow flames, that I felt like I was watching an old-time movie. Any minute now, the lights in the theater would come up, my world would be flooded again, and I would return home to Barry, to our beautiful home filled with souvenirs and pictures from every trip we ever took together.

As soon as my mind reached his name, bricks and rocks of horrifying possibilities came falling down with a devastating crash, paralleling the never-ending sound of collapsing buildings all around. My mind became at once clearer and more confused than ever. I leapt out of my car, leaving the keys in the ignition and sprinted to the door of my apartment, easily escaping the urgent grasps and yells of the firefighters.

“Barry?” I cried out with no answer except the crashing wooden beams and roaring fires all around. It was like the lack of color had heightened my other senses, overpowering me with the burning smell of smoke, the unbelievably loud crashes of wood and crackles of fire. The world around me was as chaotic and discombobulated as my mind, with no support beams left to keep my thoughts straight.

“Barry!” I repeated over and over again, ducking under flaming doorways and racing up the crumbling stairs. I’d forgotten where our room was, even what floor it was, but I ran forward anyways, mindlessly forging through any hallways still standing. I reached the top of the stairs, and was greeted by a startled firefighter, who grabbed my hand and threw me over his shoulder. I yelled and screamed at him, my mind growing more enraged and confused with each passing second.

I awoke to the sound of beeping monitors, not the end to a terrifying nightmare, but just the next chapter. The dull hospital furnishings were even more awfully monotone than I remembered. While I couldn’t quite recall what happened, one word remained crystal clear in my mind. Barry.

“Where is he?” I demanded to no one in particular, sitting up too quickly and causing the pounding in my head to magnify. Kirt was standing above me, eyes sadder than I’d ever seen.

“I’m sorry,” he began and I couldn’t stop the immediate stream of tears that flowed down my cheeks as I blocked my ears from hearing his next words, “Barry’s dead.” The words came as a complete shock, because I could never have imagined hearing those words in my life, but also exactly what I expected, because I knew. Deep down, I had known the second the color left my world.

“It’s him, isn’t it, not me?” Kirt asked me with the most heartfelt disappointment, eyes pouring deep into mine despite the tears that blurred both our visions. And there was nothing I could do but drop my head and nod: to admit to the person who I thought was the love of my life that indeed he was not. He nodded back, and I could sense the betrayal in the room without even looking up; I could feel its presence even after he walked out of the room. But I couldn’t try to comfort him, or even apologize, there was nothing left in me that could’ve given me the energy to say a word. It was Barry all along and I didn’t know: my best friend of two years, who I lied to and not only that, I lied to myself. I wonder if he knew- if he spent those two years wishing I would just realize my mistake. Because it wasn't until I had woken up in the hospital, that I realized what it truly means to love somebody.

Two years later, I still don’t know the answer: standing by his grave, just another part of my daily routine now, reminiscing and apologizing. I’m not ready to let go yet, and I don’t know that I ever will. The sky matches my mood, as it does everyday now: a murky, stormy grey. The funny thing is, a gravestone would’ve looked grey to me whether or not I could see in color. But today, it is overwhelmingly somber and dreadful. Looking through photos of our vacations together, through the multiple times I had to convince Kirt that Barry was just a friend, I land on one of us laughing gleefully under a double rainbow out in Kansas. The picture is a bit blurry and tilted, so that half of our bodies is cut off, taken by a passing stranger. It was just a spontaneous stop in the middle of our cross-country road trip, but the rainbow was something I never could’ve gotten tired of. The color is just a brief memory now, just as it had felt when I was a child; I can’t even picture it in my mind anymore. I can’t flip through some photos or watch a video to relive it. It only exists in a memory of something long ago, gone and past, leaving me filled with regret and uncertainty. I do know one thing.

No amount of greys will ever compare to a single purple.