‘Color Me Happy’ Isn’t Just a Catchphrase …
Even little things like lipstick bring us back to life …
In my experience, when you’re sad, color disappears. You stop seeing it because visual details are muted by sorrow. Everything just goes gray.
I know this because I can’t remember any colors from my sophomore year of high school when my dad died. I recall the daily functionality of things like going to class, but I couldn’t tell you what my bedroom looked like, the clothes I wore, the people I knew, including the guy who sat in front of me in homeroom and talked to me every morning, something he reminded me of when we reconnected on Facebook and I didn’t recognize him at first. I was too depressed.
After I grew up and got married, I lost color again when my ex-husband and I moved to a remote mountain town so he could begin a tenure-track position. Frostburg, Md., had one main street with cars that drove up and down honking all day long with nowhere to go, or just passing through on their way to somewhere better. People still burned coal for warmth there, and something about all that coal dust in the air caused my eyes to redden, or maybe it was crying too much from living in such an isolated, strange place. The ophthalmologist couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so I gave up makeup for a while, to see if it made my eyes…
