Trigger Warning/Content Warning: Mentions of drug abuse, drugs, sexual assault, profanity
To: you, even though you’ll probably never fucking read
this,
Okay
I can’t say the color
I can’t say it
It’s your name and it’s this color and I used to love it so much
(or did I) and
Breathe
How have you been? Have you fucked up anyone else’s life YET
Okay, I’m sorry. Let’s try it again.
Hey,
You knew my favorite color was green. But you had to go and
be born in this fucking world and then find me right? Was that the plan? From
the moment you took your first BASTARDly breath, your white hippie parents probably
saw green, saw sage, and saw you. Right? RIGHT? I remember seeing green.
It's okay; that was close. Let’s try one more time.
To whom it may concern:
My favorite color is still green. But it’s not sage. It’s
more of an emerald green. I’m not sure
if you remember that—I mean, what do colors even look like when you’re high all
the time? Do greens become yellow? Do the colors become more vibrant? Do you even
see sage? Sage?
Anyway, I’m writing this letter to you because of green,
because of sage.
Green was my favorite color.
Green was the color of your jacket when you went to see Lamb
of God in the city with your friends and we were just starting to date and I
was home with the stomach flu. I remember because I constantly checked my phone
to see if you had texted me but instead saw pictures of you uploaded to Instagram.
No matter how much bile came out of my body, there was something I couldn’t
purge. I think whatever was in the toilet was green. Sage and green. Sage
green.
Green was the color of my jacket that I bought in my
sophomore year of college when we were dating. It was so dull, but at the time,
I remember it being exactly what I wanted. It’s torn apart now, literally worn
through. I found a new one. It’s not green. Sometimes I wish it was.
Green was the second-half of Baroness’ album that we
listened to separately but discussed together. You hated how I skipped around
the album and didn’t listen to it chronologically. Yellow & Green came out
while we were dating, and we saw Baroness in Brooklyn for free. You spoke so passionately
to me about how that was the first time they were touring since a nearly lethal
bus accident; I remember when they walked out onto the stage they started to
play “Yellow Theme” and I was wishing for green but the light was yellow and
the bassist’s face was glistening in the yellow light. Then, after reaching the
climax of the “Yellow” part of the album, they played “Green Theme.” The lights
slowly transitioned to a bright green that gently hit your face too. We looked
at each other with excitement over the symbolic light change. I thought it was
so fucking cool. Thinking about it now, maybe the light on your face wasn’t
green, and maybe you didn’t think it was that cool. After the blinding green
lights forcefully transformed into darkness, I realized they weren’t the
headliner. And we had another prog band to sit through. You wouldn’t admit that
it was devastatingly boring and we weren’t nearly high enough. You never would.
I fantasized about that bassist after we broke up, that yellow light and his
long yellow hair.
Actually, now that I think about
it, I always liked “Yellow Theme” more than I liked “Green Theme” on that
album. But trust me, green is still my favorite color.
Green was the (chipping) color of those shot glass necklaces
we used for the St. Patrick’s Day party in my sister’s backyard, the year that
it was too cold to be sleeping outside. With none of my ancestors leaving any
room for Irish heritage, I still felt like hot shit when I gently laid the
cheap metal beads from which the shot glass hung around my neck. Through the
night’s darkness, I could have sworn I saw the moon reflect off of the green
shot glass. The flames of the bonfire seemed to reflect off of the shot glass’
green paint as well. You know, that bonfire you tried to stick your feet into
because you were too drunk and high. Maybe some of the spit from my mouth as I
begged you to stop and everyone else laughed wet its green paint. That same
green paint lightly touched Lindsey's chest as I kissed her in the tent. I don’t
know where you were. I didn’t care. I asked her if she had ever gone down on a
girl before and if she made a girl have an orgasm which was inappropriate (I
know), but there was so much repressed stuff from when we used to be best
friends that I had to know. The green rubbed her smooth skin as she answered “yes”
and I grabbed her face and kissed her quickly and intensely. This was years of
sleepovers and phone calls and fights and I love you’s coming to a head,
nothing but a cheap green shot glass between us. I could see the shade of green
alter after. It was shining, sparkling. You weren’t there to see. You weren’t
there to invade, which you were so good at doing. Each twinkle on the green
shot glass illuminated my heaving chest because I remembered when I came out to
you before that and said that I had loved women in my past and I think that
makes me queer and you said “that’s hot” (re: invade). And you weren’t there to
see this green. Only she was.
Green was the color of the weed you used more frequently
towards the end of our relationship. Frequent is putting it nicely. Those
shades of green were almost like darker shades of sage…of Sage. Get it? The green
of that weed felt so dull and lifeless and you knew everything about those
strains and those colors but never anything about green or about me. That green
was so lifeless in the darkness of night when you gave me the ultimatum of
staying in my dorm alone or walking ten minutes in the cold with you so you
could smoke. I always went with you, always searching for the green in the
weed.
Green was the color of the rug in my dorm room the night(s)
you did it. How could I not remember with my face pressed up against it, as I
cried? You would think that someone would know the color of the rug they were
sexually assaulted on, especially when I was gripping onto it, pleading you to
finish. Well, it wasn’t actually green. It was grey, speckled with sage. That
is what I have come to learn now. At the time I thought the carpet was green
and you were what I always wanted. At the time, when my body felt familiar with
the sage green carpet it was pressed so harshly against—in my attempt to seep
through the floor and get away from you—when my body felt trapped in the fluorescent
green sheets where you continued this pattern for a year and a half and if not
you would scold for never wanting to “have sex” (if that’s what you call it), I
thought these were green. I believed so strongly that you were my high school
sweetheart and the love of my life and that the green that surrounded us was
the same green my best friend Anne loved and the same green that would make
me want to live. (Oh and you have to remember Anne—she was the person whose
green you hated the most even though you tried to force yourself into her bed while
she was in it on the night of my birthday—the one where you gave me that ugly
green card made of weathered construction paper, with hurried, thoughtless
scribbles that disappointingly announced “I promise I’ll get you a gift. I love
you.”) Now I realize they weren’t green. I mean, they were sage. They were
Sage. I thought they were green and I thought you loved me and I thought you
weren’t hurting me: but they weren’t and you might’ve but you did.
When I say green is my favorite color, I hope you don’t
mistake that with the green we encountered through our relationship. Those
greens were sage green, and the color that gives me warmth, will to live, and
security and safety is the green that shines like an emerald. I have found this
green in the necklace I was given by current partner for my birthday; I have
found this green illuminating from friends whose love and support revitalized
me after two and a half years of toxicity and abuse.
Not to be funny, but I don’t intend to make you green with
envy. Where ever you are at in your life, your green will always be sage. For
better or for worse.
Take care. Tell your family I said hello.
Sincerely,
Me
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