The Secret Life of a Chameleon

Black and white thinking.

One of the many traits used to describe “people like me”.

How little do they know,

just how intimately I know color.

How inextricably my life is painted by a variety of shades, tones, and washes.

I am a blank canvas

able to be, or not to be, any color.

Every color.

No color.

A blank page, at the mercy of whatever backdrop is chosen next.

Drag and drop.

When I am angry, I am red.

I embody all that is, and ever has been, red.

Engulfed in flames, I am a heedless inferno.

Swallowed whole by that demanding, domineering, in-your-face energy that is red.

I overbear any color that once was.

Outshine softer shades that once may have been.

For, I am red.

Consumed, and unchangeable.

When I am sad, my world is blue.

I descend deeper and deeper into that ocean.

That ocean which is blue.

Sinking into the depths of despair, so utterly committed to being blue.

A feature piece from Picasso’s blue period.

Monochromatic.

When I am in love, that is all I am.

I see rose, I see pink, I see scarlet, in all things.

I am absolutely seduced by the romance of the rose-colored world I paint around me.

Daydreaming.

Creating that sacred fairy tail I’ve always longed to see.

For, through my rose-colored glasses, everything is divinely beautiful.

All things are heavenly, and meant for me.

Even the monsters staring back at me.

Who’s true colors I glaze over with my rose-colored glasses.

I repaint them.

For I am in love,

I am pink,

I am rose,

I am scarlet.

When I am happy, I glow.

An iridescent beam of yellow. Brighter than the sun.

Blinding those who look too close.

Burning those who bask too long.

To my dismay, we live in a world of duality.

Merciless duality.

My days in the Sun are dazzling, and they are fleeting.

When I am scared, the world goes black.

All living things, every ounce of light,

consumed by darkness.

My ravenous black.

Devoured into oblivion.

I am blinded. Absolutely, and utterly, unable to trust whatever is in front of me.

Unable to see the person I once knew.

Incapable of seeing truth.

For, I am scared.

Light ceases to exist in my fear.

Paranoia ensues, dragging me deeper and deeper into the abyss.

Ruthless, it is. My self-imposed imprisonment.

So, yes,

studies have in fact shown people like me tend to have black and white thinking.

But take it from me,

life on the borderline is anything but lacking color.

I live vividly.

I experience vibrantly.

Through my complex, robust, palette of colors.

I am an artist, this is my superpower.

To live brilliantly, intensely, colorfully.

I crave color.

My entire existence orbiting around it, depending on it for life.

I like to believe each of us enter this world with our own unique color.

That tailored way through which we perceive the world, and the world us.

Our creative signature.

No two shades are the same.

No hue more beautiful than another.

I’m not sure what my color is.

I don’t know what my very own beautiful shade once manifested itself as.

I, like many of us on the borderline, had to become a blank canvas.

To abandon my color,

Dis-own the shade that once was me.

I needed to become color-less.

To survive.

To hide.

In order to reflect whatever color I needed to.

I am a chameleon.

Master of illusion, and expert on the art of transformation.

Of disguise.

Limitless potentials, infinite possibilities.

Unlimited color.

I am an artist, a shapeshifter, a cosmic creator.

I get to live life through every color. Through any color.

It is a privilege to experience mortality so deeply, so profoundly, so intensely.

Through all parts of that which create the rainbow.

Each part is beautiful.

Each part holds value.

Each part is essential in this spectrum of color called life.