If I was to paint a picture that embodied me as a person, the majority of the canvas would be covered in shades of blue. There would be green for my love of nature, yellow because I love yellow flowers, sprinkles of lavender because I love the smell, and yet your eyes would be drawn to the very prominent blue. My art wouldn’t be a mosaic of different blues just because it’s my favorite color. It would be a collage of blue, because I am blue.

When I picture my childhood, every scene I picture has blue somewhere. The blue sky is shining down on me and my horrible sidewalk chalk drawings. Or surrounding me as I plunge into the pool off the diving board. It's in the chairs that were lined up perfectly uniform with the desks in third grade; and the twisty slide on the playground of my elementary school. Whenever I had a coloring sheet, while others would try to be fancy and make sunsets in the background, I would always look for my favorite “cornflower blue” crayon and make the sky look like an ombre of different light and dark shades. I’d then take the picture home and proudly show my mom my blue sky and then proceed to hang it up in my room. Some days it was almost as if blue followed me everywhere. 

When people think of happiness, or having a happy personality, they think yellow, while I think of blue. See blue can be subtle, shy, timid, like I am when I’m exhausted. Blue can be bright and energetic, as I usually am when I’m living my best life. Blue describes me in words that aren’t even in the dictionary.

Until writing this essay, I had never thought a bit about how the color blue could so perfectly illustrate me as a person. Even now I sit here struggling to find the words that could convey even a little bit of the feeling within me that tells me “I am blue”. And I don’t know that I ever could perfectly explain it. Because when I see blue I don’t say, “Oh that's a happy color! It’s just like me.” It’s just a feeling that feels right.