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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