Beating For You

Prologue: Red

The first time I saw red was right after I was born. My mother had just given birth to me when she died from postpartum hemorrhage, I didn't know what that meant for a long time, until I googled it up three years ago and found out that she had bled to death. Her small body couldn't take the heavy toll that I was, she was to young and to frail, after all she did conceive me when she was fourteen.

The second time I saw red was when I was six years old. My father had been holding a shotgun in his right hand that grandpa William had given him after he died a year prior. He shot himself in the head while I was oblivious to what was happening, I was scribbling the pretty flowers that bloomed in spring when my ears started to ring from the loud noise. His body had fell with a heavy thud onto the carpet floor, red was running fast out of his body through a bullet sized hole on the side of his skull. It had been hours before the authorities found me staring blankly up ahead in shock.

The third time I saw red was when I was eight, my foster mother had come back from a bar, she was drunk and high from whatever drugs she was on at the time, and backhanded me. She said she did it because it was my fault that her life was shit and miserable. The jolt had made me fall backwards into a wooden cabinet with a mason jar filled with red roses on top of it. This had caused the jar to fall to the ground and shatter, cutting me in the process. That night I had to learn how to fix myself up for the very first time, and it wouldn't be the last for sure.

After that, my life was a constant repetitive dream of different shades of red. Whether it was after I hit puberty and my foster mom refused to buy me any sanitary products, or that time when charlotte brown made me trip in the cafeteria causing me a broken nose, all I saw is red.

And I know what you're thinking, this girl is crazy, red is a color, what does it have to do with anything?

Well, this may sound stupid to you but before my grandpa died he used to communicate to me through colors. Red was anger, trauma, panic, and the bad things lurking to get to you. Yellow was happiness, excitement, the good things in life. Blue was sadness, sorrow, grief and tears. Brown was disgust and Green was greed. Purple was confusion and Orange was comfort, while white and black where life and death.

So whenever my grandpa couldn't understand me, or me him, he used colors as a form of communication between us.

"Don't be so green Rae, good things are meant to be shared" he used to say with a raspy old voice after years of smoking, "I know it's brown but you gotta eat vegetables to be healthy" he spoke firmly whenever I refused to eat, or "Care to share why you are so yellow" he used to ask with a contagious smile on his face.

Through colors I understood the world better, but people didn't make it easy for me like my grandpa had. When i was seven my teacher Ms. Collins gave me detention, I kept on answering her questions with colors and she thought I was making fun of her. "Why didn't you do your homework Raven?" she had asked me with a sneer on her face. "Because i'm so blue" I had whispered back with tears in my eyes. She couldn't understand me, and neither did the other students. Probably why I had no friends in school while I was growing up. Except for Marissa owens, she was the daughter of Mark owens, the owner of black star. Black star was my orange place, it was quiet and smelled amazing, my grandpa used to take me there almost everyday after school when I was younger. Eventually I had to find my own way to get there.

Marissa used to sit at a table next to the cash counter drawing whatever she saw with her colored crayons. While my grandpa chatted away with Mark about sports and whatever drama was happening at the time, I used to sit in front of Marissa and observe, her sketches where mostly of buildings, she told me she wanted to be an architect when she grew up, she had dreams of walking through paris with a hot coffee in hand and her sketches in the other. I admired her for that. Eventually after weeks of watching Marissa, she slipped a plain white paper across the table that had forever set my future. I wanted to be an artist.

And so my journey began. Whenever I was feeling a certain emotion I got out my sketchbook and drew whatever I was feeling. All my drawings consisted of mainly one color, and that was red. 

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