Cravings

​I’m conscious of a craving - primal, visceral, raw, and real. It’s visual and tactile and goes well beyond any type of desire I’ve ever had before.

I’m hungry for it.
Didn’t even realize it until recently, when I noticed I couldn’t get enough of it.

Not chocolate.
Not sex (although that’s wonderfully primal too).
Not for luxury items or things…

It’s for…

COLORS
Not just any colors.
VIBRANCY

Along with the craving comes the incredible, enormous feeling of being 100% ALIVE.

I’m not even sure I am describing it correctly.

​As a writer, I have the luxury of language being at my fingertips. With the touch of a keyboard, I describe emotions and experiences in grand detail.

But I am not certain where to begin in this particular instance.

​Do I start with the ending of something that I thought was beautiful, yet in hindsight was so tragically flawed in it’s concept of love that I found myself shrinking into oblivion? 

Mornings became less bright, and the dark no longer had the gradation of shadows in purples and navy blues and blacks. It was just… dark.

So when it ended - that so called “beautiful” relationship which even now I still look back on with love although it doesn’t seem to have been reciprocated in an authenticly healthy way - when it ended by MY own choice, I felt my soul expand…

I discovered my voice could be heard, and I drank in the beauty of existing without someone constantly telling me how “less than” I was…

I felt like I SPARKLED again, and the world took on a whole new palette of technicolor.

So should I start there?

Or do I begin with the urge I feel to touch paintings like when I was a kid, as though I could fall into their swirls and strokes? 

Or perhaps I commence with the way I greatly desire the feeling of snuggling in soft pretty fabrics. Or the intense urge to drape myself in clothing that POPS and SHINES and expresses me in a way that makes me feel like I am the subject of a my own masterpiece.

Would that be too vain of an idea to launch this piece with? 
Do I care if it is too vain?
Is love for oneself so awful?

It might help to tell you how foods started to smell appetizing again, and I bounced in my seat drinking my first root beer float since I was small.

Maybe I should relate how the SOUND of the float as I slurped, and the slight fizz of the soda also have colors that call to me…

I have synesthesia. 

And mine manifests in moving VISUAL tapestries of sound - mainly for music. But even the everyday mundane noises will often show up in my line of sight. For years I tried to drown out the colors by attempting to “ignore” them. 

But now I marvel again how even ordinary objects, combined with their sounds, have texture and nuances that made me pause in wonder. 

Chocolate really is velvety in how it “looks” if I crunch into chocolate chips. The quiet sound of small sips of coffee “appear” like raindrops in my sight as I drink.

This might make more sense if I told you that my dreams are like film quality movies. I remember most of them in great detail. I dream in color palettes dependent on what I am dreaming about. 

Fantasy dreams are bright and almost neon in quality. Like the moment Dorothy arrived in Oz.

Memory dreams - in which I relive in minute detail the experiences I’ve already had - are a subdued palette. As though the New York filter from Instagram had been applied to the very essence of my memories. 

Nightmares are palettes of flashing blacks and blues and lightning bolts illuminating the things I wish I could unsee.

Over the past year though, my colors became muted. 

Or rather I felt muted, so my world started to feel as faded as I did. As I became smaller, less vivid, I questioned whether the colors of my life would continue to do so too.

But then one day, not quite two months ago, I couldn’t take the fray in the fabric of who I was. I felt pieces of myself tearing off as though I was worn out jeans. And as I gathered the gray dimmed bits together, I began to notice that I was ravenous…

I was starving for the vibrancy and texture and hues that had formally turned my world into a giant unlimited Crayon box - the likes of which would be the fantasy of any child.

So I’m feeding myself in colors again. I’m practically gorging on  a world with textures and light and the visual aspects of happy sounds of laughter and music and passion filled exclamations of joy. 

I’m feasting on the idea that I myself, can be a visual representation of what the world looks like to me. 

Thus my hair is streaked in purple pink as though my fairy self sprouted right out of my scalp. My clothes are vibrant or moody to show variations of the multifaceted experience that is me, and always accessorized. 

Even the VISION for my lovely apartment - which stands mostly empty at the moment - is filled with bright, happy colors. I want friends to one day come in, and say, this feels like Tink’s oasis.

I’ve heard you’re supposed to do things in moderation. But like so many other “life rules”, I’m convinced that this one rule was indeed created by a sad excuse for a human who didn’t like seeing others’ joyfully indulgent in life.

After all, misery loves company. And thus will clothe itself in the mundane and dull.

It’s a good thing I’m not miserable then. As I intend to let the passion leak out of my soul, so that from afar someone will glance up and see me coming, vibrant, colorful, and very much ALIVE.

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