somewhere over the rainbow

i'm not sure if i really remember this or if my mother had told me about it so many times that i have claimed it as my own, but my first favorite color was yellow. coming in a close second was orange. i loved them so much that anything i could ask for would be in either of those two. it went so far as to be the (or what i thought would be) the future car of inked ... a yellow Volkswagen bug with a biiig orange bow on the top ... HEY i was 4!! i only ate lollipops in those colors and i would pick out all the yellow and orange m&m's. i remember my clothing being abundantly yellow ... my crayons all broken and stripped naked of their paper covering except for orange and yellow, as if i despised even looking at the letters that spelled out another color. i was obsessed (i know, SHOCK, GASP, NO!).

i believe this phase lasted until i was about 12 at which time i looked about my room decorated in various yellows and oranges, and decided that i detested yellow ... i loathed orange ... i needed some citrus cleansing ... NOW! my room was stripped of anything that looked remotely yellow/orange ... the new colors were deep purple, sexy lavender, stark white, severe black ... bold, loud, harsh .. exactly what i needed to be away from the colors i thought of as infantile.

as the years passed, so did my inclination for those colors. i started to adopt a more varied wardrobe and more soothing surroundings. i chose colors based on how i felt that day, not just sticking to them because i was trying to prove a point. by the time i was in my junior year in high school, i had become more of a color whore. day after day, the colors would be different, i was not choosy. i felt liberated from the monotony of my self made pigment prison. but somehow, i still could not bring myself to wear yellow or orange. i couldn't look at either of those colors without feeling a bit claustrophobic ... feeling the overpowering box that as a child i put myself in because of my color preference. yes, pink had made it into my wardrobe as had peach ... but the exact shades of my childhood were still being unconsciously barred.

now as i write this, i am very happy to tell you i have crossed my last hurdle. i knitted a yellow and white hat last night and there it is, sitting right on top of my head. i'm not quite sure if it looks good on me (somehow yellow is always the color that people say looks awful on them), but it somehow feel right. i remember being in the store and picking up the yellow yarn ... and feeling connected. sounds weird, huh?

i think it just may be that i finally have come to grips with how things were in my past. that i finally know that neither yellow or orange are to blame for the way that i feel ... i know it may be hard to think that at the ripe old age of 34 i haven't figured that out before now, but i suppose i hadn't. now before you all think i am crazy i know that colors are not to be blamed for how my childhood went. but my room was the place i tried to hide in, to retreat to, to feel safe in ... and i think somehow i felt slighted by that. because i wasn't safe there. and rather than blame the obvious, as a kid i somehow deflected this onto the room. i don't know if it's normal behavior for our household, since i've never asked my brother how he feels. i do know that i've never seen anything red in his home since we were kids.

so maybe it's because i am more secure with myself, that i don't have to worry about hues filling me with dread. or maybe it's because i have been so disconnected lately that i realize that the sadness can follow you around even if your room is transparent.