Hues of Yellow

I have a Pinterest, as most twenty one year old white girls do, and one of my boards is called Positivity My Dude. I quite enjoy this board and it's hues full of pastel yellow, light pink, and sky blue. When I was in Australia, I created this board because I was sad. And there is no sadness that a boat load cheesy sayings over aesthetically pleasing photos of sunsets can't fix, right?

While I was in Australia, I fell in love with the color yellow. A color that I had actively despised for most of my life -- for little to no reason except that I'm just as stubborn as my grandmother was. I realized while I was there just how nice yellow and all of its hues are. Yellow is, of course, happy. That is what it represents in most western cultures which is why most of the 695 pins on my Pinterest board are yellow.

Yellow is the sun at golden hour. It's the string lights on a christmas tree. The slide on my swing set when I was a kid. Yellow is the color of everything good. It's everything warm. Everything happy.

Yellow feels attainable. Even when life all around me feels like a deep blue or a hazy grey. Yellow is somehow always faintly off in the horizon. Sometimes I feel like it's mocking me. Like it knows something I don't, that I'll never get to reach it. Those are the days I usually sit on Pinterest and add 695 more pins to the board. As if that will change something.

I bought a yellow comforter for school this semester. My last one was black and white, and the sight of it makes me anxious now. I'm not anxious over the comforter on my bed anymore, but for some reason I'm still not totally happy.

The idea of home is something I've been thinking a lot about lately. Sometimes, when things are chaotic it's hard to feel like you're at home. Recently, everything is chaotic. Everything is stressful. And nowhere feels like home. Everywhere just feels increasingly temporary. Like that hazy, foggy grey where the sky and the ground seem to blend together.

To me, home is somewhere you can go when you are stressed or scared or sad and feel, somehow, better. It's somewhere warm and bright and comforting. I was lucky to find homes while I was away in Brisbane and London. Those homes brought me so much joy. They made handling everything that life threw at me that much easier. But now I really am "home" and the only thing I want right now is to not be.

I want to be in London wandering around the V&A. Or in Brisbane walking along the river in South Bank. And I'd do anything to be in Portugal sitting on the beach. Those places are each their own perfect, golden hue of yellow.

Adding pins to a Pinterest board all about positivity is the most useless way to make yourself happy. I'm aware of that. But it is comforting, sometimes, to read those cheesy, cheesy words and feel a little bit less alone for just a moment. Feel a bit more yellow. And a little less grey.