Blue

                “Why do you only paint with blue?” he asked. The young woman dipped her hands in the soapy water and rubbed away the dried acrylic and charcoal from her skin.

                “Blue can mean anything,” she replied with a soft voice and a crooked smile.

                The man took her place in front of the sink to clean his own hands as she stepped aside to dry off. She placed her paintbrushes in their jars to air-dry for the following artist that would come. Sometimes she liked to wet the brushes with water and pretend to paint spirals and shapes on her skin like ancient tattoos; it soothed her nerves.

                “I guess I don’t understand that. Blues depress me. There’s no energy or life to it. It is cold and damp. I try to use as many colors as possible. Using only blue doesn’t feel,” he paused, trying not to offend her tastes, “…realistic.”

                “I love color, don’t get me wrong, but blues feel more realistic to paint with than anything else. The oceans are blue and cold and dark, but they are full of life and their waves are full of power. The skies are blue during the day and the night; the blues caress the clouds and the stars. We always look to the clouds and the stars to dream and wonder at the world around us, and the blues embrace those things like dear friends. The blues comfort me. Don’t be scared of them.”

                They took off their smocks and hung them on the wooden knobs by the door before walking out and the woman continued.

                “Blues are realistic because sadness is realistic. I think it’s a happy color too but if you can’t feel sadness at some point then how can you identify happiness? I use blues in my paintings because blues don’t give a damn about what they’re supposed to mean. The only one that cares about the meaning is the person who looks at it.”

                They walked in silence through the heavy doors and out into the courtyard. Nearly every person in the grassy square lit a cigarette and pulled their coats closer. It was a beautiful, clear sky but the wind whistled through the coats and cut into their bones. In twenty minutes a nurse would peek out and announce it was time to return to the building. The man and woman began to weave between the other patients and follow the short sidewalk path of the courtyard.

                “Why are you here?” he asked delicately and was surprised that she was looking at him directly when he turned to her.

                “I don’t know…well I suppose I know. I didn’t know how to handle the world anymore. I stopped seeing the blues. I could only see the gray and I was scared.”

                “You have a habit of confusing me,” he laughed and she smiled in return.

                “I have a habit of confusing myself.” There was another gust of wind that made his knees hurt and they walked to a bench in the shelter of the building before she continued speaking. “Why are you here?”

                The man took a deep breath and scuffed the heels of his worn brown shoes before turning to face her. He wasn’t very old, no more than thirty or so, but there were times like this when he suddenly seemed eighty. She held her gaze patiently while she waited for his answer.

                “If we are talking about colors still then I guess I’m here because my life became black and white. The lines weren’t blurred anymore and I felt like I could keep living like I was or simply…stop. I’ve always been able to see the hope and figure out my next big plan to make me happy again but big plans don’t solve problems. Now I know that facing your problems for what they really are is how you find a solution.” He removed his rough hands from his pockets, despite the bitter wind that nipped them with the cold, and examined them. “I’m tired of working hard but holding onto my past. It makes the work harder. Do you understand? I let everything slip through my fingers even though I do my best to hold on to everything I care for.”

                “I understand.”

                The nurse called the patients back into the building and everyone immediately relaxed as they walked through the heated entrance. More heavy doors were opened and the ones behind them automatically locked shut. A small line began to form to get fresh cups of weak decaf coffee in Styrofoam cups. A handful of patients returned to their rooms and wouldn’t reemerge until the next meal time or courtyard break.

                The woman grabbed a hot cup of decaf and headed back to her own room. She left the door partially open, placed the coffee on the side table, and decided to lie down on the stiff mattress to warm up.

                There was no blue here, she thought. There were only artificial colors flooded in harsh hospital lights that drowned out any feeling or emotional response. There were whites, yellows, dull grays and remnants of a shade of turquoise that had gone out of style forty years prior. It was if all the colors patients could encounter in the hospital were chosen to keep people in a subdued state. I miss having an emotional response. I can’t be happy without finding the color.