We are all familiar with the 1939 classic story “The Wizard Of Oz.” It starts off with Dorothy singing on the family farm, daydreaming about that perfect place that’s somewhere over the rainbow. Then the wind picks up with black clouds overhead. The rest of the family including her beloved Antie Em find their way safely into the storm cellar. She tries to yell for her family to open up that cellar door to let her inside. They can’t hear her over the storm, so she seeks shelter on her own inside the house. The storm blows so fierce that it breaks the window and knocks Dorothy completely unconscious.
For reasons that are still unfolding, I and many others have been given this blow to the head just like our dear Dorothy. She thought she wanted to be safely under the cellar with the rest of her family, however something out of her control took her into this alternate universe. The Technicolor Universe. I along with so many others like me are living in this new reality. We now walk around with rose colored glasses, when the majority of the population is still viewing the world in black and white. Now, parallel to Dorothy we learn with time we can’t just sit like a bump on a log waiting to be rescued by that guy behind the curtain.
I fought so hard against living in this alternate place thinking… “I just want to go back to my pre-diagnosis life…my black and white days.” But this is not my world anymore. I mourn the version of myself that used to exist, while also exploring who I am and what I want in this world with all the colors. And you know what? Sometimes it can be a lonely fucking place and a scary place. On the other hand, I get to experience levels of myself that no one else will ever see within themselves. Given this rare pass into the underworld I get to rebuild who I am. Everyday I have a little bit more of my own version of Emerald City.
I remember to be graceful with each step on those bricks because this new version of Dorothy has been through so much. This is a daily practice. I have to remind myself that the normal societal standards or pressures no longer apply. To put it simply, my house that I thought I wanted no longer exists. It was demolished by the twister known as my illness. I now reside in Technicolor.
So, you may think outwardly that I am falling behind in your world, but please know that in color I am right where I need to be. This place is beautiful because it has so much depth beyond the black and white. So, you see I can’t go back home ever again because I don’t know that world. I don’t know that me. I intend to work with…not against what has been given to me. To create something beautiful out of something seemingly so ugly. No, we are not in Kansas anymore, and no, I don’t want to go back. I can’t. This is real life.
There’s No Place Like Color.