My Heart: A Balancing Act

Sometimes it only feels darkness; other times it easily slides back into pastels.

Tonight I realized something that may seem so benign that it might not be worth mentioning, but in actuality, I think it’s something pretty deep that I’ve been able to identify about myself in the ebbs and flows of therapy and ketamine treatments and loves and losses. 

There are two parts to my heart. One dark, and one light. But it’s not just a stark divide, a contrast of colors, a controversy of which side is activated and which is hidden. Sometimes for weeks, or months, or even years, one side is the dominant voice. Other times, they switch back and forth in the quiet, in a way that only I really know about. 

Recently I’ve found myself wondering at times which part of me is going to speak up. Which part of me is going to be the loudest in that moment. Which part is going to be what I put out into the world at any given time, in response to any given situation. 

For the last three years, I’ve assumed black as my favorite color, “the color of my soul” I’d say. Wednesday Addams really gave me an outlet to channel that - the desperate wanting to hide my body, hide my feelings, hide my pain from the world. Wearing black from head to toe, from eyeliner to fingernails, it felt like a uniform. It made the feelings of fierceness and strength more accessible when I needed them to be. It allowed me to be unrelenting in moments that I had no choice but to survive. Honestly, it somewhat allowed me to turn parts of me off inside. My black tinted heart was often the one that disassociated so my body and my brain could keep moving forward. 

But before that, before the tragedies started compounding, it was different. There was my previous late-twenties obsession, the Instagram ideal, picture perfect soft pink or rose gold, like the warmth that comes from the twirling of a ballerina’s skirt - graceful and tender, measured and gentle and slow. Sometimes when that color pops up, I just can’t avoid it. My accessories, my artwork, my home decor, my packing cubes, my drawer dividers - I wanted it all to be pastel, gentle on the eyes and easy on the heart. Aesthetically pleasing. Alluding that I had it all together. 

What is “it” you may ask? It’s everything. 

It’s just now, months into the absolute hardest deconstruction and rebuilding of my mental health that I’m learning I don’t in fact have to choose one column or the other. In fact, the real lesson is that by empowering myself, I can choose in each moment which part of me is activated and which part responds. I don’t always have access to both sides of my heart simultaneously, so when they are jointly available, I try to think about what it feels like to straddle such a vast schism on a somewhat routine basis. 

Is there a transition from flowing to rigid? From soft to stark? From then until now and maybe again down the road? There aren’t any easy answers to these questions, but I can tell you that the feelings come from deep within me. 

I’ve been “allergic to color” since the twins died, as if wearing black, painting my nails black, buying only black accessories, keeping the curtains shut, immersing myself in the literal darkness would somehow better contain my grief, or announce my grief like a sign on my forehead, or maybe even give me permission to grieve under my own sort of secret code. Spoiler alert - I’m not sure it achieved any of those specific things, but I can tell you that to this day it’s the uniform that still feels safest to me. 

The other side, the one that constantly tries to sneak a peak at the things that are pastel, light and airy, gentle and tender, I’ve noticed it come back in very small doses recently. It’s been a long time, and in a way it feels hard to talk about it, because I think maybe I didn’t know I was already trying to save myself. 

The overwhelming barrage of Wicked merchandise and collaborations has really had me thinking - the black of Elphaba’s dress and hat, against the blush of Glinda’s dress and wand - which one I’ve gravitated to over and over again (#teamelphaba) & what that means to me. It has been familiar to see that the few pale pink items I’ve snagged have illicited that same softness feeling deep inside my chest, as if perhaps there’s some sort of comfort or dare I even say joy in connecting to that version of me again, even just for a minute, a makeup case, or a hair bow? 

They’re just colors, you may say. 

But to me that’s far from the truth. It’s an illumination of the little girl inside of me and the adult responsible for her. It’s the woman I was before and after the veil of truth was lifted. The person who didn’t know that grief could tear you apart from the inside out, and that sometimes hope actually feels physically impossible to find. The two colors are a constant reminder of innocence and naivety, and the truth, which is that they were aggressively swiped away from me much earlier in my life than I really understood. And a contradiction of protection, tucking away the things that used to bring me joy, versus the active defenselessness and vulnerability, spaces where it’s better not to care at all. 

Inside I am both black and pink. I am both searching and hiding, seeking and finding, unraveling and rewinding - filled with something less scary than hope, maybe hope-adjacent like a longing to continue to step away from the edge of the ledge and back toward the life that I so desperately want to rebuild. 

They’re not just colors. 

They capture who I am in its entirety this season.