The Colors They Gave Me

They handed me colors

and said,

"This is who you are."

With careful strokes,

they painted me

like an old portrait

hanging in a forgotten gallery.

Each eye that looked upon me

chose a different shade.

Some painted me in gold,

seeing strength where I felt fragile.

Some painted me in gray,

seeing silence and mistaking it for emptiness.

Others dipped their brushes in black,

coloring me with assumptions

they never cared to question.

And so I stood there,

framed by their opinions,

layer upon layer

of colors that were never mine.

For every heart

sees through its own window.

Every soul

interprets the world

according to its own weather.

A joyful heart finds sunlight.

A wounded heart finds storms.

And so they painted me

not as I was,

but as they were.

For a while,

I accepted their colors.

I wore them like borrowed clothes.

I smiled beneath their brushstrokes,

nodded at their descriptions,

and carried the weight

of paintings that did not belong to me.

But acceptance

is not agreement.

Deep within my heart,

I knew something they did not.

Beneath every layer

of borrowed paint,

there remained a color untouched.

My own.

The color of my nature.

The color shaped by my dreams,

my scars,

my kindness,

my mistakes,

and the quiet truths

I carry when no one is watching.

It was never as bright

as some imagined,

nor as dark

as others believed.

It was simply real.

And real things

rarely fit neatly

inside another person's frame.

So I no longer fear

the colors they choose for me.

Let them paint.

Let them guess.

Let them create their portraits

from distant observations.

For when the old paint cracks

and the borrowed colors fade,

the truest masterpiece remains,

the one hidden beneath it all,

the color that belongs

to no eye,

no judgment,

no expectation,

but only

to the real me.