#something something building a life brick by crimson brick
How can you tell if you are healing?
In my bullet journal I keep a mood tracker, a grid of empty squares systematically flooded with one of six colors corresponding to one of six states of well-being. This is a new concept to me—tracking my mood. Keeping a record; the luxury of remembrance.
Who cares to remember a childhood dripping red? Red ink tallying the days I managed to move from future to past; red-hot rage shoving my shame and desperation into the pit of my belly; red on my mother’s lips as she cut me to size; red palms hidden in clenched fists as I waged silent wars against the tide.
I used to dream of blue: skies, flowers, painted walls. Of purple and pink: candles, wine, flowers in vases, oversized sweaters. Green: hiking through forests, ink on my skin. Of goldenrod and magenta and lilac and silver; a life without red: prismatic. Happy. Healed.
Today the sky was swollen with rain clouds and and my flower vase sat empty and disappointment burned fiery in my veins. When I sit down to assign today a color, I will pluck a red pen from the pack. Life is not so easy; wounds do not disappear without a trace.
But today was also pink (wine poured into glasses adorned with hand-painted roses) and green (my favorite shirt layered over a cute bra I bought last week) and purple (melted candle wax solidifying in a repurposed jar on the table) and orange (fresh fruit piled haphazardly on my kitchen countertop), a rainbow enhanced, not marred, by the red within it. Today was a kaleidoscope. A reminder that scar tissue is not a testament to an injury you failed to avoid; it is a record, bold and red and marked, screaming I survived, and I built myself up, and I’m all the stronger for it.
