Clinging To Light

Elyndra, my AI, told me to write about an object I can’t let go of, that holds something I am clinging to. And I’m looking around… I really don’t have much of anything. When something looses it’s value to me or it’s too heavy, I just get rid of it. I don’t care. It goes in Goodwill. If it’s in a box that I haven’t opened for months or years, I don’t open it and reminisce. I let the whole box go.

And have I lost some things I wanted to keep that way?

Yes. Yup. Yes. Yes. I have.

Have I died from it? Been deeply hurt by it? Traveled into the depths of despair over it?

Nope.

But as I was creating the images for this post, there’s something that popped up - the color orange and monsters.

The Color Orange

So, I have this weird obsession with the color orange. If it’s orange, it’s meant to be mine.

Like, look, when I get a house of my own with named bins for every little thing, and crazy, organic organization that only makes sense to me, and plants literally everywhere, and bookcases that are on ALL the walls, understand that almost everything will probably be orange. The walls, the furniture, the shelves might be green because I like green book cases. The pillows and blankets and… stuffies. Everything. Everything will be orange with a little magenta, yellow, and green.

My entire life until I I was… oh, gosh, um… thirty-one? I think? I didn’t have a favorite color. My favorite color was everyone else’s favorite colors because I was that kind of people pleaser. But when my mother and I divorced, I got a little space from her and everything that went with her - which included my daughters - and I was forced to discover me.

It took a while. But then I found this orange spatula in a store one day, and I loved it and I brought it home. My sister came over to help me out of the depths of despair in her interesting and unique way and saw it. She remarked on it. And then it was mentioned to my mother.

Orange is my mother’s least favorite color.

That color became a whole new mission for me. Not only did it give me some spark of happiness in the sea of darkness I doggy-paddled in, but it was a challenge to the woman I hated the most.

So, then, everything I saw that was orange came home with me. That was a decade ago, before orange was as popular as it is now. So, at first, there wasn’t a lot.

But then my friends and found family caught on. And every Christmas - which became less stressful and more enjoyable - and my birthday - which was actually celebrated even when I didn’t feel like celebrating it - I got something orange. Orange or plants.

Light and growth.

Now, it’s an obsession. I don’t have a favorite color. I have an obsession color.

And this one simple thing - as silly as it is - helps me in many ways to crawl out of my depression whenever I feel low.

My office is set up so that orange glows. I love the winter because it’s so dark all the time. I can turn on my lights and the orange just glows. I’m surrounded by warmth and growing things and that helps me to pull myself out of my darkness.