The thing about being a deep feeler is that you feel things deeply. Like, way down in the pit of your heart where you don’t want to feel things because it’s just a little too much. Loss. Anger. Loneliness. Love. Heartbreak. It’s all right there, so close, so deep, and you have to feel it. You have to breathe through the mask of whatever emotion it is you’re feeling. The world around you is suddenly bathed in some kind of color and it’s all you can see, all you can taste, all you can feel.
Feel.
Sometimes I feel things red. Red, like the blood that pumps through my veins. It’s bright and stains against White so that everyone can see it. Unrequited love. Passion. Dreams that I’ve cradled against my heart since the day they were born. This color spreads and reaches far, sometimes farther than I wish. It touches untamed places of my heart and I struggle to keep it under control, but sometimes Red is too much for me. Small doses, pinpricks on my skin, these are fine, I am stronger than that. But when the knife tears down my skin and all is laid bare and Redcovers me from head to toe… I cannot manage those feelings. Red makes me stare at the sky and wonder about the beauty of stars, it makes me dance when I should be walking, and it breaks me into pieces when I have no reason to be broken at all; except that I am red now. I am red and pain and everything hurts.
Sometimes I feel things blue. It’s cool and steady, heavy along the back of my spine and I feel it trace its way through my bones. These are tears. Heavy ocean waves of grief. Cold shadows of my past, my memories that sink into me when I’m unguarded. Blue takes my breath away. Sometimes the blue makes me feel like I can fly with the way it pulls me up into the velvet sky of what used to be and how lovely it all was, but then my wings are ripped from my shoulders and I plummet down, down, down, into the icy depths of loneliness. It’s the regrets that nag at my mind, and the “what if’s” and the “goodbyes” that are outlined in diamond tears and wrapped up in navy-colored silk. Blue is my blanket when “right now” feels empty and unknown. It makes me slow, but sometimes slowing down is important. He is my wise old friend who remembers with me, cries with me, then stays always a step behind me. Sometimes I need Blue to be close, and sometimes he is too close.
Sometimes I feel things green. It’s there, an itch that fights inside my mind and my heart. It feels like a weed growing up and around my gut, sucking life and twisting tightly until I’m all shriveled and dry. She comes to me on my wild days. I can’t fight her. She’s temptation that will not be denied and she is envy that makes me blind to every good thing in my hand. I’m shoved deep into a forest of shadows and I run and I run and I run, but no matter how fast and how far I run, I never find the edge. I blow about on every wind and I know that I am nothing more than chaff when Green is in control. Spending nights with her are sleepless and long. Green is my enemy.
Sometimes I feel things purple. The way I hold my head high and walk with confidence and know that I am loved and accepted. Purple is rare. I treasure Purple. I wrap her around me like a cape and adorn myself like a queen. But Purple is fickle. One day she will come with the beauty of my heart, the clear thoughts of truth and gentleness of spirit. Other days I find her when my outward appearance pleases my reflection and I know that eyes will turn towards me. I struggle to consistently identify Purple rightly. Sometimes I’m sure it is her, when really it is a fleeting trick of the eye that leaves my heart pricked and sore. Sometimes I shut her out, proclaiming I do not deserve her. “Leave me!” I cry at her. “I’m not worthy of Purple!” I list the names of those who know and exude Purple and I wish I was them. Then I realize that I can be; I can choose Purple. Purple can be constant, her different hues shining in the different flickers of light, but she can always be with me.
Sometimes I feel things yellow. Soft. Delicate. Whimsical. Pretty. I find the warmth under my feet as I tiptoe through patches of sunlight, and I feel it all the way in the center of my being with the smiles, the laughter, the golden sunsets and lilting melodies. Maybe that’s why my favorite sound is my best friend’s laugh; because it’s pure yellow. Yellow makes me swallow sweetness and fills me with the purity of babies snuggled against my chest, small children reaching for my hand, a dear friend telling me that they thought of me, and a song that shakes every shadow and cobwebs from my insides. Sometimes I think I might break Yellow, or lose her forever. Sometimes she mixes with Blue in an overwhelming feeling of pain and joy that I can’t talk past the lump in my throat or see through the happy tears in my eyes. She lights up memories like stars in the dark, reminding me that some things are so yellow, so bright, so perfect and brilliant that even time will never cause them to fade. I love Yellow. I can’t make her come, but I can find her when others can’t if I put my mind to it. She’s quiet, like a secret, but a happy secret that takes joy in being discovered.
Sometimes I feel things orange. The rush, the busy, the push, the pull, the “what in the world?”, and “how on earth?” Orange eats me up from the inside out. Devours me, taunts me, ridicules me. Be faster, he whispers. Be better, he jeers. Go, go, go. Orange is a liar. Orange is a frantic frenzy to everything he touches. He lights up the accomplishments of others and pulls my eyes away from who I am to who they are, and suddenly I am no longer purple; I am not good enough. I stay up until two am with Orange, not for the chats, but with the tossing and the turning, the double-checking and the second-guessing. When he comes, I must be perfect, and if I fail, he glares in my face until it’s all I see. I don’t see my purple, or yellow, or red, or blue, I’m just a failure and surely it is all I will ever be. He has a tight grip. I’m getting better at fighting him, but he’s incorrigible, and I must battle him daily. I find I am stronger than he is when I open my mouth and ask for help.
Sometimes I feel things gray. Nothing. Can you feel nothing deeply? It’s numbing. I don’t know. Sometime I feel nothing and it’s there, pressed up against my heart. I don’t understand it. I guess sometimes I welcome it, hoping for a reprieve from green, or red, or even blue. Or the world has slammed me in the face with reality and poison and I feel too small to matter so I call for Gray. She’s medicine, I guess. Hello, medicine. But not really, because Gray does nothing. It cocoons me, but I don’t emerge as a butterfly, I’m still just me; gray and, oh! There’s another color. Hopefully Yellow. Hopefully Purple. Maybe even Red, just a little bit? All I know is that I’m no longer gray. Goodbye, Gray.
Sometimes I feel things brown. Brown is complicated. I need Brown, but too much of Brown and all I am is a muddied mess that covers every other color that might try to save me. I need to remember my frailty and my weakness, I need to remember my flesh and bones are from this slowly dying world, but too much remembering and it’s like quicksand, sucking me down and deep and there’s no air down there. Orange tries to be friends with Brown, but Brown is a steady color. She’s the earth that sticks to the bottom of your feet and leaves behind your footprints. Brown remembers, too. She remembers everything; from the very first moment that she was created and when God pulled Adam out of her and shaped a man. She also remembers the serpent, and sometimes Brown can pull me down until I’m clogged and heavy, stuck in a mire. She is unbothered by whether or not I walk with her safely or if I stumble and fall; it’s all the same to her. She’s a unifying color, though, when we allow her to be. We all have weaknesses. We’ve all fallen short. We can use her to build a common ground between us, but we must continue on from her as well. She is not our home.
Sometimes I feel things white. The absence of color? Or, at the very least, the absence of me. It’s the absence of selfish desire and broken pride and wounded desires; it’s just love. It’s love for the people, the places, the future in front of me. Sometimes I’m sat with a beautiful soul and all I feel is white and I can’t do anything except feel that glow for that person. I think that maybe they make the white and they’re the reason why I’m all lit up on the inside when I am with them. I feel White in the “pinch me” moments when I can’t believe that I am where I am, that my feet are standing in the sand and dust that might cause others to be orange or brown, but in that moment, in that instant, it’s all white. Sometimes my bluest moments were once white. Sometimes my whitest moments are stained red. Like I said at the beginning, Red shows up the best against White, leaving no one to imagine what color you once were. White and Yellow love to dance together, but I know that White is the strongest, most enduring, longest-lasting feeling. Some people in my life will always be outlined in White. I’ve found that there are people who were meant to be eternally white in my memories that are now just mostly blue. Sometimes I want to give up on White because other colors bleed into her and I can’t always focus on what is important, but White never gives up on me. When I feel things white, everything comes clearly into focus and, deep breath, okay, yes… this is why I am alive. White is worth the battles with Orange, and the falling from the blue sky to the blue water, and the brown stuck to the soles of my feet from walking alongside someone who needs a little help, and the redredred that soaks into my very core. And when I am white, I find that I am also purple, but only the very purest shade of it. White cleans away all the green. All the gray. All the ugly, too-much brown. White is the greatest of all.
So, I feel things deeply. I feel the pain and the regret and the shame and the brokenness until I can’t breathe, but I also feel the freedom, the joy, the love and the hope. I feel the memories that ache, and I feel the dreams that have not yet been fulfilled, but I also feel the promises that have been kept and I feel the faithfulness of God’s goodness. My heart knows that deep cries out to deep, and I never want to ignore that call.
