Live in Color

three - brown

Living in color is like stepping into a whole different world.

It's been three months since that night in which I bumped into my soulmate. I know all my colors by memory now. I'm still not completely used to waking up and seeing the bright pigments around me, but it's something I've grown to love and appreciate in my life. The colors are beautiful, really, and everyday they just seem to grow more and more beautiful. Whether it be the murky green or dirty water or the bright red from stop signs, everything was vibrant and beautiful.

As much as I want to appreciate it all, I've been falling more and more into a depression, and I know why. I was, ultimately, rejected, even if it was without words. My soulmate doesn't want me, meaning I'm left without my other half. At this point though, I feel like all of me had been torn away and like I'm empty. A lot of the time the pressure on my chest is one of the things that will register through my mind when I blank out, just staring at the light blue walls of my room.

I haven't seen my soulmate since that night. The other times I've walked through Crooks Street to get home has been with caution and flickering eyes, but there was no sign of him. No sign of his amber eyes or black hair. His skin had been much more pale in contrast to my darker skin, even though looking around at the skin tones in my class, I'm not that dark, more like a medium tone.

I discovered a lot of things about the way I look the first couple of weeks of living in color. My hair, which has always been long and wavy, is brown. It shines in and changes to more of an amber underneath the sunlight. My eyes are hazel, a complex spectrum that lead to a black pupil. My eyebrows match the color of my hair and so do my eyelashes. It's strange to look in the mirror and see this person- this Natalie- when all my life I was used to dark grey hair, white eyes with a bland black pupils and light grey skin.

Jamie has asked me multiple times what color is, but I finally understand just why it's so hard for parents to explain something like this to their kids. I try to tell Jamie, but it's nearly impossible. I explain that the world is not longer black, white and grey but when she tells me to explain what I see instead, she has no background knowledge to know what I mean when I say red, blue or green. She doesn't know what those colors look like. I feel bad for her, I really do- seeing color is a gift I can't wait for her to experience.

Colors have made me happy, but now that the initial excitement of it has settled down, I'm left in a slump. I've lost the motivation to do school work, socialize with others and sometimes even get up from bed. I know it's only going to get worse. No one is supposed to live without their soulmate, but that's exactly what I'm doing. We went to the doctor about it, but he said there's nothing he can do. He recommended antidepressants, but I refuse to stoop that low. I'm not going to give my soulmate- the one is causing me to feel this way- the satisfactory that he won.

It's gotten colder outside. The months since my birthday have definitely had its toll on the weather- days are getting colder and nights are getting longer, which only manages to add to my depression. I sigh, resting my head against the cold window of the car, watching the scenery around me slowly begin to slow down until my mom pulls up to a stop by the school.

Her warm hand rests on my unmoving arm. "Have a good day, sweetheart."

I want to say I won't but know that it'll only upset my mom. I nod, giving her a fake smile- if it can even be considered a smile, it's really only a slight upward tugging of the corners of my lips, a pathetic attempt- and quickly lean over to kiss her on the cheek. "Are you picking me up or is dad?"

"I will," she promises. "See you after school."

Lethargically, still feeling like I want to just lay down and go back to sleep, I open the car door and step out. Turning back and grabbing my backpack, I close the door and wave at my mom.