Colorblind

My father and I share the same handicap: we are both colorblind. But not colorblind in the conventional sense and not colorblind in the same way either. The difference between my affliction and my father's is pretty subtle though. My father, in his infinite wisdom, has this amazing ability to look at the sky, on Tuesday, and think it is green. Like actually green. In fact, he is so sure that it is green that he thinks that everyone else sees the sky as green too. To him, people who think the sky is any color other than green is wrong and needs to work on their color recognition skills. Then, Wednesday rolls around. My dad walks outside and looks up and just as he thought it was, the beautiful, dependable sky, is purple. Truly purple. As purple as it was yesterday. Anyone who tries to tell him the sky is blue or even green, as he saw it yesterday, is crazy and, bottom line, disrespectful. This is my father's agnosia. For me, though, color blindness is a different shade. On that same Tuesday, when I woke up, I saw the sky and it was blue. Just as blue as it has always been and always will be. But, I go about the rest of the my day, with the blue sky above me, and wish, so deeply wish, that the sky would turn green. I believe, in my infinite wisdom, that the sky could, if it looked inside itself, if it realized its potential, if it came to its senses, turn green. I live out that Tuesday willing the sky to turn green, hoping that today might be the day. Then Wednesday rolls around. I wake up and walk outside again after a full day of blue Tuesday and see that the sky is still blue. I know it's blue. It's so fucking blue. But. Maybe. Today. Maybe today it will turn green.

You are my sky, my blue sky, that I believe, hope, wish could, would turn green. I wake up every day knowing, on the deepest, most realistic level, that you're blue. But I hope, in the most ethereal, religious way that you would just realize that you're green. It's been two years of colorblindness. Two years of watchful waiting. Two years of exhausting, draining, disappointing looking at you and wishing you green. And I can't do it anymore.

I might be colorblind but I'm not stupid. I know you're blue. It's not a facade, it's not a costume. You. Are. Blue. It's time for me to stop willing you to turn green.

I'm so tired. I'm so angry. At myself. At you too. But mostly myself. For ever thinking that you could actually make me a priority or ever love me the way I want you, need you too. You know I have feelings for you. You've known since the time we ate pancakes in the rain and laughed at ourselves. You've known since I finally reached my first boiling point and outright told you. You've known all along. And for selfish reasons, reasons that I would never blame you or fault you for, you kept me close because you needed me to love you. Not too close though. Just close enough for you to make me think you could be green and far enough away for you to stay blue. You needed me to hold the place, to serve as a substitute, until you found something more valuable, more desirable. Just good enough to keep you entertained and relevant. You needed my attention, my affection, my affliction. I made you real, here, grounded, a part of this earth. I took your abstract need for a partner, to fill the void, and made it less distressing, more bearable. I built you up and and supported you through some of your toughest times. I held the pieces that you disintegrated into in my hands until you were ready to take them and put them back together again. And while I was carrying you around, my feelings for you grew, piece by jagged piece. You were so caught up in your own breakdown that you couldn't see how heavy your pieces weighed in my arms. You couldn't see that the parts of you that I nurtured while you rebuilt your walls became a part of me. Became a part of my walls. I took you into my heart, my life and I let you seep into the framework. You flooded my bedrock, my scaffolding, and stuck to it like mold.

Don't misunderstand me. I welcomed your shared feelings, fears. It felt good to know that there was someone in this world who wanted me to know them. Who felt I was important enough to see what others weren't allowed to see. You're so private. So contained. But you let me in and I saw glimpses of your potential greenness. And your blackness. The darkness that that lives inside of you. And I loved it. Your green your black and even your blue. I wanted to be your confidant, your sounding board, your person. Because I loved you. Because you let me love you. You let me believe you could be green and black and blue and if only I stuck it out, played the game, proved my worth, that one day you would wake up and be green for me. Green for me because you loved me too.

But you don't. You don't love me. You. Don't. Love. Me. You have thought about loving me. You're lying if you say you havn't. You maybe have even tried to convince yourself to love me. Because it would be so easy, so perfect. But you don't. You can't. You may not even be aware of it but you dangle it. Your love. Like a dollar on the end of a fishing pole. Because without my love where would you be. Who would tell you that you're worth something or that it will all be okay. You would be bored and alone and that, that threat of loneliness, is scarier than anything. The ultimate motivator. This deep, basic, human, absolute terror of being alone. It makes us blind. Color blind.

If I argue that the fear of loneliness is what drives us all then where does that leave sex? Sex. Sex has blinded people since the beginning of time; it has shifted borders, started wars, made music, created people, so it must be pivotal in what makes us do the things we do.  Oh, how it is. But I don't think it starts there. Making decisions does not begin with the drive for sex. It begins with the drive for affection, the drive to fill up the holes we feel inside of ourselves and sex is the ultimate filler. The irony is not lost on me.   We followed suite. We started with loneliness and, after time, filled it with sex. Your green but empty sex. Like a business transaction. Without eyes or mouths or passion. Mechanical. We had the emotional and the physical but never the romantic, never the combination of the two. Because that would be way too green. But I am human and I wanted your touch, in any way I could get it. So I let you fill me with blue.

So really, you and I are the same. Afraid of the same things. Too scared to leave.  Complacent. That's where I live.  Too nervous to rock the boat. The status quo is better.  Better this than nothing. Better the hope of greenness than the reality of empty space.

But this is where we differ. I may be too scared to leave but I am also too scared to stay. I have lost so much of myself in my pursuit of loving you, my mission to bring out your green that I am afraid that I don't know who I am without you. I'm afraid that your absence from my day to day life will leave me with a palpable void. A nothingness that will drive me mad.

But, I remember, this isn't my first time at the rodeo.  I have loved and lost before and I will do it again. I can't wait around for you to turn green anymore because all this waiting and hoping has turned me white. Made of nothing. Malleable. Moveable. Destructible. And I need to save myself before there is nothing left of me to save.

It's going to take me a while to be comfortable with the unchangeable blueness of the sky. I am going to wake up tomorrow and look up and see it as blue but still wish it was green. And I'll probably do the same thing the next day and the next day and the next day. But eventually I'll get to the point where it won't matter. Where the sky can be whatever color it wants. And on that day. When the sky is blue or purple or red or orange or green. On that day. I will see. And all I'll see...is me.