Beige: the color of my grief

I live in a house that’s decorated in varying tones of beige.

I’ve lived there for a year now, but it’s just started to bother me. I’m taking it as yet another symptom of how muted my personality has become.

You see, beige is not me.

I’m more of an anycolor-with-cadmium or black-with-chrome personality. Death before pastels! I live for Technicolor moments. I sing with my headphones on. I laugh out loud – even when I go to movies by myself. I don’t just sing in the shower: I dance.

So it puzzles me that my life has become so beige. Has grief literally leached all the color from my life?

Don’t get me wrong. I think beige is a fine background color. Khaki pants are a great way to set off a spectacularly plaid shirt for example. (To confess, I have three pair of khaki pants and a skirt.) But all my walls are beige. My carpet is beige. The bathroom tile and tub – you guessed it: beige.

And beige in my book is an empty page. By itself, it’s a color that says nothing, does nothing, evokes no emotion and causes no offense. Even white – clean, pure, simple – says more than beige. What a waste.

I hear, the death of someone you love – in my case my mom – can be a defining moment in your life. And here, I’ve become a beige person.

That’s gotta change. I’m more than my grief.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to paint. The danger here is that I’ll go overboard and overcompensate for months of a beige existence. (I’m thinking a mustardy yellow/ocher in the living room, sapphire in my bedroom and a mossy green in the downstairs bedroom – ooo and maybe aubergine in the office!)

My first painting project is the downstairs bathroom. I’ve already bought the paint and started the first coat.

Let me just say that the chocolaty color looked really good on the paint swatch (I dunno, maybe I was hungry at the time). But now that’s it’s up on the wall, it looks less mocha and more doo-doo brown.

Ironic, no? I’ve barely gotten started and it’s already looking like shit. (Get it, I made a punny – looks like … oh, nevermind.)

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