Brushstrokes of Blue

I don’t know why they call this the blues.  Blue speaks calmness and serenity to me.  It whispers of the ocean waves, crested with white, rhythmically rocking back and forth and lulling me into a restful slumber in the sun.  It tells of the limitless blue sky that surrounds the world, constantly reminding each and every soul of possibility and promise.  Blue is the voice I hear when I look into my daughter’s beautiful, bright eyes and that voice declares, “I love you and I need you.  You make my heart happy, mother.”  The blues, then, is such an inapt term for what I’m feeling now.

Blue - 7th Wave by Lindsay Malboeuf

There are shades of gray perhaps – each dull and poorly drawn.  Ashen and drab, dreary and leaden – those are the tints and shades that more accurately portray my somber mood.  Calling it a mood, however, is quite inaccurate as well.  Its proper names are mental illness, bipolar disorder, seasonal affective depression, and not those basic blues that most people speak of.  Ah, yes, the blues, a lovely term used to minimize the true effects of depression – the colors and odors no one wants to speak of.
 

Black is the most prominent color.  Lights out in the bedroom, which I am terrified to leave, hiding under the covers while my mind races irrationally and anxiety hovers all around me in steely shadows.  Black as I close my eyes and the voices of depression wish for them to remain forever closed, to never see again, and for my heart to stop feeling this god-damn persistent pain.  Into the black as the debt piles up with more missed days of work due to illness.  If there’s any blue in this picture, it’s only in that my being feels beaten, black and blue and deeply bruised, by this disease.

Sometimes I rage red.  I’m infuriated with this lying bitch of an illness and my temper squalls like a wicked, thundering storm.   I’m irritated with the stigma that surrounds it, the sideways glances and condemning whispers behind my back.  I hear your words, your words full of ignorance and judgment, your words that make me want to crawl back under the covers and fade into blackness.  Sometimes I even credit your inane words and then I became wrathful toward my own person, believing I am worthless and weak to the depression, as if I had a choice to simply snap out of it.    

If I were a painter, I would add brilliant brush strokes of radiant color to this dark, depressive world.  I would add wisps of that blue, calming and inspiring.  A blue sky overhead as I breathe in the fresh air and feel glad to be alive.  I would enhance my canvas with a glowing, brilliant burst of yellows.  A bright, yellow sun dazzling down upon me, warming my soul and instilling me with hope and promise, making my whole being as glowing and resplendent as the sun shining in the sky.  I would splatter shades of green and purple, capturing the blooming of vines and flowers, the lilacs and the lilies.  I would toil not; I would bloom and grow and feel whole again. 

My palette doesn’t currently contain the colors I desire.  No gentle blues, no soft lavenders, no silky violets.  I don’t want more doors painted black; I long for open doors with the saving sunlight flooding quickly in.   Although I crave color, my entreaty goes unheard for this illness is a violent screamer that hearkens not to my hopes and perceives only the black, the red, the ache, the rage.  To be blessed with color, I needed to be born into this world as a different girl.  However, I won’t fault you if you put on a smock and pull forth a paint brush in an attempt to color my world.  I may always be an incomplete canvas, but sometimes the most beautiful works of art come to fruition from the greatest struggles.