red tv

Years ago I wrote about my solitude, more of in pain despite it being my own choice. I was seventeen, and at that age it was normal to have thought the world against you, but I didn't know both better and worse were intertwined in the path to come.

At times I look at the words I once wrote and there grows a bitterness. Of how my alleged wisdom then makes me groan with embarrassment now. Or the amount of youth and hope in somebody made of stupid decisions. And when there were no words, the pictures of a girl who somehow exhumed humour out of her loneliness.

I could not call any music mine, for I was using somebody else's favourite songs as company to get over the heartbreak. I try to listen to this band today but it's now the opposite of both the music I like and the person I have grown to be. Why the shame back then? The sadness wouldn't give in to upbeat tunes the way the morsel of individuality to a sameness with the crowd.

But I look in the rear view mirror now and as blind as I can get sometimes, I can see the distance I've come. I now see no shame in loving a pop artist who is ashamed for ordinary things but whose lyrics are so hauntingly twisted. Today she is the main inspiration behind my twists of words, yet I never grew alongside the majority of her work. 

At seventeen, I'd referred to a now meaningless shell as Red. It was merely his favourite colour and I had gotten to the point of hurt by his name. Months later a renowned American singer released her fourth work with the same name; I just didn't realise it until years later. 

The destination changes with every switch of the tracks, memories scattered with every song that passes. There is one for the evening on the expressway, another for the walk towards the blue line, one for the night in the hospital. And all these happened years after the album was let out into the world.

And though I was a few years late, I was shown harshly how the colour red is never always love. Red is knives into your heart in the form of words. Red is the rash that slowly develops on your skin over five years without you realising. Red is the blood staining the hospital bed, red is the block you grew up screaming and crying in.

Today at twenty-six I am red, the train line where I learned laughter and tears, one of whose stations is now my second home. I am red, the laundry detergent we are trying in hopes of a stronger scent. I am red, the prayer mat I lay my head upon in his shadow. I am red, traffic light reflected on my husband's face in the car he drives us home in. 

I don't want to write about anything or anyone new. I want to stay in the bubble that is me, made of past likes and dislikes, stations that changed and construction sites that finished without my knowing, people long gone. For I am not me without the hardship of the past nine years. 

But at the same time I want to revel in the new things, from friends staying over until two in the morning to snoozing two sets of alarms to resume sleep in each other's arms. It is these little things, the scattered flashbacks and awry train tracks that formed my kaleidoscopic view. There is still heartbreak and loss somewhere deep within me, but I won't let either go for it is both the negativity and newfound happiness that formed the mosaic standing in my place today. 

That I have learned is red, and it's time to listen with someone new alongside, with a new mind and new perspective of myself.