Purple

There’s a place I know called purple. I find myself soloing its borders often.

So many questions in a day. How was your day? Is not usually asked. The answer brushed on fine, great, or maybe just ok. A simple phrase in passing, not one for unpacking in all the layers of boring, drama, trying or failing.

How do you feel? Fine, great or maybe just ok. Sometimes that description isn’t enough, just a layer of sand easily blown off. Leaving the crusty layer exposed, the real answer regarding my day buried below like a rock to deep to move, the effort not worth the pick of an axe. What mark can it make on so heavy a load. But how do you really feel?

The thought of the answer looks like a white board empty of choices. Blank, empty inside my head, how do I feel?? I’ve no idea! How can I list all the things that I feel, I’ll be carried away in a flood with no warning.

How to describe the weight of the world that’s sat upon my shoulders, the sorrow in my bones that ache with reminders, the fear that taunts me from the edges of a day in darkness, or the burden of adulting that chatters to me that I’m failing.

Ok take a break let’s forget about feelings, describe a Bear, that’s easy, he’s furry. Cute from afar, yet utterly terrifying. He sleeps in a cave, catches fish for dinner, romps on the ground and climbs high in a tree. He eats berries, opens cars scavenging for snacks, harassing campers who believe he should be fed. He’s big and hairy, multi colored with levels of scary from basic black to brown and then there’s the grizzly. If feelings were bears I’d know how to share them in simple terms using words called nouns with modifiers, a superlative or two with a verb thrown in for some actionable drama.

Now let’s try another with a more complicated answer, describe to me Purple: a color mixed from blue and red. That’s all I’ve got, it’s really the end, I can’t elaborate with verbs, superlatives or actionable agendas. My feelings feel purple, thats what they are with no words to explain, no thoughts can equate, feelings fill their own space with too much nothing left to say. An unexplainable, lost, wordless place mixed up in a fight between blue and red, painted confusion between my gut and my head. Knots tangle, spiderwebs breed, focus is lost I can’t make peace. I sit here alone in a field of mines etched in crayon ashy in dusk, as purple descends into dark casting out the sun.

Does anyone else know this place of feeling alone stuck with feelings that forget to go home? Can you find me and help me, I’m not sure what to say. I don’t know what I need or even how to ask. I don’t know these feels, the heals or the story. I’m overwhelmed with no thoughts and no words, just buried in layers of violet, magenta, orchid and plum, iris, mulberry, lilac and mauve.

I think what I need in this sea of periwinkle is an eye that sees, a hand that grips, an ear that listens and an embrace that holds. Unfolding, unknowing, trusting and growing out of this undefinable cluster of amethyst.

Do you know this place called purple? Can there be a code, an SOS, to hold space for the one whose entered its zone. A code that says you’re not alone, I see you, I’ve got you, you need not explain. No drowning, no falling, no endless alone-ing, no labeling, no judging, no out of time warning. Just a friends’ simple knowing that my address is crimson until all of these feels have felt their way out, a 💜 will do to mark this spot, shared space enough to know I’m not all I’ve got.