We are all colored.

When people ask my race, I say I am Caucasian, which is just a synonym for white. But I am not white. Some days I am red, other days I am yellow, I've even been blue a time or two in my life. If you simply look at me, you will say that I am white. But you would be ignorant because if you hold me up to the light, like a prism, you will see each of my colors emerge.

I was pink when I was born. Cute and cuddly. Everybody wanted to hold me, to kiss me, to be by me. Pink is a good color to be, for a pink person is never lonely. Just look at Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger. Everyone wanted to be her, or be with her.
The next best color to be, is yellow, because yellow is happy. Yellow is the color of pure sunshine. There are too few yellow people in this world. I would be yellow all the time, if I could. If there was no such thing as disappointment, hatred, or just plain sadness. Yellow is the hardest color to be, because there are so many other colors that want to keep you from reaching it. I have been yellow, and I will be yellow again someday, but right now, what I am is gray.
Gray isn't a sad color. It isn't a happy color. It's just a color that you turn when you don't know what to feel. When you're not sad but you can't honestly say that you are happy. I am gray because I am realizing that life isn't all that I thought it would be. It's not all glitz and glamor, nor is it all gloom and doom. It's a mix, a balance, and I think that maybe it's healthy to sometimes be gray.
I get red when I think of all the things that are wrong with our world. How can people let things like genocide or mass hunger and poverty occur? There are people who don't have two dimes to rub together, while others toss quarters into the streets because they don't like the way they jingle in their pocket as they walk. It is ridiculous and it saddens me to think of all the lives that are lost because people who are able to help, are not willing to.
Sadness is, of course, blue. Blue. Tears and rain are blue. Blue can be sung or danced, cried out or hidden. You turn blue when your world is changed, or when it isn't. Everybody knows what it is like to be blue. You can go be blue with other people, or you can be blue by yourself. I like to be blue by myself. It's easier to handle, and easier to get over. I have colored all those who were once dear to me, blue in my mind. It's hard not to be blue sometimes, no one should ever be blue all the time.
I have come to realize that life is not what I thought it would be when I was younger and more ignorant. I think I was happier then. "Then" being back when the worst thing I could get from anyone was "cooties" and being pushed in line was the worst pain anyone had ever bestowed upon me. I didn't know what war was like, and I hadn't lost anyone I truly loved. But my experiences are the colors in my rainbow of life. I can not change them, nor can I forget them. All I can do is accept them as a part of who I am.

Learn more about this author, Samantha Stotesbery.
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