I Will Always Be Yellow

It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that not everyone is going to like me. There will always be people out there that no matter how hard I try, they have a strong distaste for the person that I am. It took me so long to realize that this is okay due to the fact that I constantly sought the approval of others.

It became normal for me to feel like the outcast even among the people that I so loosely called my ‘friends’ and I was constantly searching for a reason to stay with them. They were interesting and different when compared to myself, and that is exactly what I liked. I hated myself and the way that I was. So, I so desperately tried to muffle the sounds of my brain calling out saying that these weren’t the people God intended me to have in my life. I began to lose myself in the same places I was searching. I was no longer creating a person that I thought I wanted to be, but mirroring the people I surrounded myself with in an effort to be loved in ways that I so clearly needed to be.

Let me explain it this way: I decided a long time ago that I was yellow. That the hues that followed me and created who I was were the colors of sunshine and gold. I was the type of person who radiated these colors all the time and when I was younger, was completely unbothered by showing them. The problem was that I always tried to fit in with people who preferred blue. The cool toned wonder that created the sea. I tried really really hard to be blue for them. So hard, that I convinced myself that I was no longer the shades that created precious metals, but the tones of devastating waves that crashed into shores somewhere foreign to me.

But you see, that is how you lose yourself. You get so focused on what other people prefer and who they want you to be, that you start to rob yourself of the beautiful colors that make you well, you. We become so used to the feeling of not belonging that we begin to think it is normal and continue to suffocate the blinding pigment that makes us who we are. We become so consumed with wanting to be accepted that we forget the extraordinary beings that we are and force ourselves to be a version of a person that we aren’t.

It becomes a new normal. It’s like wearing a mask to fit in at the masquerade party. Without one, everyone knows who you really are. With one, there is some sort of mystery behind it all. One day, the mask is going to fall off and we are all going to be forced to be who we really are.

I think that day has finally come for me. I no longer want to be consumed by the waves of blue that crash on the shores so close to home. But I wish to return to my golden yellow. Pure and beautiful, just the same as some people view blue. It may be scary right now, trying to figure out what it means to be myself again, but this is all okay. I know someday, someone’s favorite color is going to be yellow.. I can’t wait for that moment.

There will be times when you begin to question who you are and why you are doing the things that you are doing. Remember that no matter what happens, you should stay true to your colors. The truth is that I will always be yellow...Even if you love blue more.