Dearest Red

Dearest Red,

You were one of the earliest colors I saw, the shade that told the world that I was born. You would have been my favorite color then, but my first association with you was of pain. That pain would sometimes make me cry. And although you didn’t matter much to me when we first met, you had always known that I would carry you for the rest of my life—and that is something that I am yet to be thankful for.

Ours was an introduction that would have been easily forgotten, if not for your being that ubiquitous.

When I first learned how to walk, and traverse the hollows of the universe that is enshrouded in mystique, I found you yet again after my falls and failures and in the kisses that my mom would give me when she would reassure me that I am only growing wiser and stronger from those wounds.

Our roads crossed yet again when I was introduced to scholars and tomes that taught me more about this life. By then, I appreciated you as one of the primes that had created hue from the gray, black and white. I learned how to wield the color of pain and turned it into one of the colors that can paint my dreams. Of course, it wouldn’t be until later that I would discover how all colors were somehow related and were born through you.

When I was a bit older, I realized that you were also a part of the things that had grown from bland and sour, to something sweeter. In cherries, apples, watermelons and strawberries—you had grown appealing to me now. And so, as I am rushed with all the desire to devour your every palatable element. The sugar rush, the juice, and the citrus were never enough for me.

As I had gotten much grasp of the people around me, then learned the ways of my body, I began to trace you into the fist-sized muscle that leapt every time a certain person would come my way. Sure, it was a bit odd and somewhat unfamiliar, but I welcomed the feeling with blushing cheeks and a carefully plucked crimson rose from the garden.

For the not so appealing, you were the one to forewarn that something isn’t right. That is why I might stop at your command, or turn the other way when someone is losing it—that is, “turning red.”

I thought I had brushed away the dark part of our first meeting, but I am yet to relive them again, as fate would have it. When I saw my own child being born in this world, as I had once been, I came to see how you were there: the newborn was blue while he was silent, then he turned rosy with the first tears that dropped from his eyes. Now I realized how much you meant to me after all this time.

As my child grew, so did he experienced the same things I did with you; I am very happy that you are now with him as you were with me then.

And then for quite some time, you slowly left me. You weren’t completely gone, but your presence was tapering. I longed to see you again, but the world said that I should not be hopeful of such thing. Once, you were that which gave me life; now, your presence tells the world that I am being washed away from it all—until finally, I turned ashen like to those that would only treasure you after you are gone.

So hear me out red, my bittersweet tone. Perhaps it wasn’t love at first sight, perhaps it wasn’t love, or perhaps love is blind. But for the many colors that have been sprayed into my life, yours was the color that gave me life, taught me how to be strong, and enabled me to appreciate the beauty of love.

Dearest red, I had never admitted that you are my favorite color. But you have always been, you have always been.

(Source: arthemismax)