Colours, Nature and Beauty

I have never seen beauty. Of course I have seen the computer edited girls on the glossy magazine covers and bulked up boys on sides of busses, but never something that made my heart beat double time or made my stomach fill with butterflies. I never saw the added traits those perfect girls had or any reason to makes others hearts go in myself, so I painted the world with grey and blocked out any colour that had been there before.

I started trying to see why this fake image, this shell, brought sparks of reds and pinks into some people's lives. What about their lovers made the butterflies rise into their skies and swirl into blues and purples or formed their stars and moon. But no matter how hard I tried these people stayed mud brown, I couldn't separate any colours from them and what may once have shone through was long gone by the time a camera lens turned to it.

Once or twice I thought I had caught a glimpse of green or a snatch turquoise out of the corner of my eye yet it had always seemed vanish by the time I whipped my head round, trying to get a better look. I talked to people and to them, colour came naturally. They said they saw the northern lights in somebody's eyes or Niagara Falls in another persons hair, one person said they saw a sunset of golds and roses in the skin of their lover. So I started to look for rivers and oceans, fields of grass and flowers in people but I always ended up back in my tower block of concrete.

When I hadn't found the answer in talking or reading I stopped trying to look. Time would show me the colours, the nature, beauty, right? Yet as I stood frozen the world blurred past, other peoples colours leaving strands of light on my little bubble of grey.

Until it felt like the rest of the world slowed and matched my separated pace to let me see them walking towards me. They brought with them not a paint bush and paint to colour me in with but a dustpan and brush to help me fix myself. They never expected me to change who I was, they didn't want to force me into seeing what wasn't there for us. And they sat by my side and offered help when it was most needed.

So with their help I peeled back the cracked and faded wallpaper on myself and saw underneath not what I had hoped for, not better not worse but a difference an alternate. I saw how my colours within me could be shared in my own ways. I had no need to create the bright sparks of reds or the pull of the river. I cleaned my windows of the dirt which had long resided there and let my own love shine out through them and letting others love into me.

They showed me the mud again, and this time I saw its potential. This was the grasses bed the place it came back to, this mud was the base of the earth. Without it the butterflies would not have a place to rest to spread their wings the next day or bring the colours which some so desired.

I saw my old concrete complex but this time I looked closer and they pointed out what my expecting eyes over looked, I saw the people living inside each apartment with their own ways of seeing beauty. Through the window I could see photographs of the northern lights bringing colour to that persons life, a giant painting of Niagara Falls with the water crashing together at the ending releasing its energy through the whole room.

And I saw around me now, not just the greys I had painted on but lighter tones. The powder blues when a mother would hold her baby to her, or the light greens when the long separated friends hugged once again. I felt the warm glow when a child cradled a pet in their arms with fingers lighter than feathers stroking its delicate fur. This was beauty, not in the way I was told it would be, it wasn't a riptide trying to drown me in an ocean of colour or a rainbow dragging me to a pot of gold. Instead it was gentle and caring, kind and calm.

And what I had with them was definitely love, not the type where I saw sunsets in their skin but a lighter type. I didn't want to love them like that. I wanted to love them as I did. It was them who let me see the colours,they never brought them as I was told they should. They gave me the ability to do it myself they pointed out what I'd been missing all this time. That the true key to beauty was in myself and I was finally able to see that.