Red and blue make purple. Blue and yellow make green. Red and yellow make orange. Each colour stands beautifully as an individual. Yet, when it blends with another, something changes. A seismic shift. Suddenly, there’s a whole new hue on the palette.

When I first heard the song ‘Purple’ by Olivia Rodrigo, this particular lyric stuck with me profoundly. I keep coming back to it; circling and underlining, poking and prodding. I love the simplicity of it - using something as primary yet magical as colours to express a poignant feeling.

The feeling of melting with someone else, not necessarily romantically, but even platonically.

You meet someone as a blue. For a long time, you remain the blue to their red. They bring the power, fearlessness, passion, and zing. You offer calmness, stability, and logic. The walls stand true and tall. The lines of distinction are clearer than ever.

Time passes and seasons change. You start picking up a word from their vocabulary, using it as your own. They use the phrase “that’s crazy” about a hundred times in a day, and suddenly you find yourself blurting it out in the middle of a serious conversation.

Next thing you know, you hate olives on your pizza and love french fries, because they insist on ordering that for the table every time. You’re standing in line at the cafe, and you see a warm, gooey choco chip cookie and click a picture for them out of instinct.

Your blue is already being painted in shades of red, and you haven’t even begun noticing.

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As a red, they were all about passion and fire. Always lashing out at the tiniest of disagreements. Honking and rolling down the windows to yell at the driver who’s taking a wrong turn.

They made decisions impulsively, excitedly, and unapologetically. If it spiked their interest, they were all in. Logic and semantics immediately out the window. Crimson and scarlet blotched over their thoughts, motives, and actions.

Until the blue started seeping in. They now take four deep breaths before screaming while stuck in traffic, because you taught them the box breathing method to water down rage. They’re still all in for going all out, but now they rationalise if it’s worth their time before stepping a foot in the door.

Your blue turns mystically red too. You start seeing life for so much more than just a rooted river or a free-flowing ocean. You organically notice the fervour of poppies, vibrancy of hibiscuses, and the pure, unadulterated love of roses a little more.

You don’t lose out on yourself when your paintbrush collides with that of another. You remain blue. They remain red. However, a new colour now enters your white canvas. A vivid violet, curious mauve, or subtle lilac.

We cross paths and assimilate with so many people in our lifetime. So many lives touch ours, we touch so many.

A canvas that was purely blue, is now red, purple, orange, green, pink, yellow, and so much more. Melting and blending through every stroke, crafting a magical painting that’s irrevocably and uniquely, yours.

What happens when you have a lot to say but your words are stuck? When your emotions bubble up in restless desperation, nearly tipping you over the edge, and yet something holds you back. A crippling blockage. An untamed resistance. A subdued ache that makes you believe it’s better to stay quiet because no one wants to listen anyway.

A few days back, during my yoga class, while all of us were doing an asana, my instructor stared at me and asked, “Are you stressed?”

I was shocked. How did she figure it out? How could she see the powerful emotion I’d been feeling for the past few weeks but dared not express?

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At the end of the session, I went to simply tell her that I’m leaving for college and won’t be able to join from next month.

Somehow, this conversation panned out to be a full-blown emotional moment of pure, unfiltered sharing. One where I was forced to talk out my fears, lay out my pent-up paranoia out in the cold, and finally, finally express. I left feeling vulnerable, unexplainably exposed, and inevitably in tears.

We hadn’t conversed for more than a proper minute in these eighty something days. Yet, she knew me like the back of her hand. Not the filtered, stretched-out smile version I tried to parade around in the world. The ugly version. The messed-up, tattered bits of me that I attempted to block out with every anxious breath.

One of the many things she said really struck a nerve with me. She looked me straight in the eye, an empathetic smile on her face, and said,

In theory, I knew this. However, the fact that a practical stranger could see through my layers of defence, and unravel my darkness felt strange to me. A tiny arrow poking its way through the crevices of my heart, pinching like a tiny paper cult. Her words stayed with me long after I had left the studio.

I feel too much, express too little. I feel so deeply, it hurts to exist within these tangled, godforsaken clumps of emotions. Love, embarrassment, fear, guilt. Anticipation, anxiety, regret, and sorrow.

The deep well of empathy within me keeps on giving. It never dries up, but keeps scratching the rocky surface of my heart, till all it leaves behind is crimson, gnarly scars.

If someone upsets me, I bottle down my anger. Swallow the tears and drown in the melancholy. I distance myself, probably take a day or two to rationalise and give them the benefit of the doubt.

“It’s okay, they might have been busy.”

“It’s okay, they probably didn’t mean it.”

“It’s okay, be the bigger person!”

And so, magically, I heal myself. A few days later, I am as good as new. My sadness was never expressed. They never got to know how they did me wrong. I never gave them the chance to justify or explain or apologise. Another fight averted. No problem created, no solution needed.

Today, I paused to ponder. Where did all those emotions go? Did I heal or just got good at hiding? Were they just added to the never-ending reservoir of feelings I’ll never express? Things I’ll never say. Issues I won’t bring up, risks I won’t take.

Being unexpressive comes with other perils too. People assume you’re selfish. Think you’re taking them for granted. They decide you don’t feel anything, you’ve got a heart of stone. I don’t blame them for their presumptions, they have their reasons.

Nonetheless, it breaks my heart knowing they’ve got me all wrong. They don’t see the smile I’m faking. The words stuck in my throat, struggling to break free. The tears I’ve tried so hard to gulp down, and all the “it’s okay’s” I keep throwing around.

I feel too much, express too little. Maybe that’s where it all goes wrong.

There are some aches that are loud. Gnarly. Piercing through your veins, demanding a reaction. Edging you to scream, shout, cry in agony. Conversely, there are some aches that persist subliminally. Dull, subdued, and free-flowing. They don’t make you lash out. They just make you curl up in bed and lull your sadness to sleep.

The fear of abandonment is one such sedated pain that permanently lives in the back of my mind. It peeps through the cracked walls of my caged thoughts. Occasionally popping up to say hello, grinning like a devil, bearing its daunting teeth.

It gets triggered at the most random instances. If someone suddenly gets dry over text or their tone changes. They send an “ok” instead of an “okayy.” The rational part of my brain tells me it’s fine. Maybe they’re tired. Maybe they don’t want to talk. Or perhaps they are dealing with some issues of their own. I calm myself down through anxious patience.

I distract the fear with songs, shows, and books. Yet, a minute or two later, the devil unlocks the door and whispers. Its wicked smile haunts my dreams. Heavy breath sends chills down my spine. It pauses, then says, “What if they don’t want you anymore?”

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When I’m in a fight with someone, my whole body functions in overdrive. Just apologise. Say sorry. Shrink yourself up, even when it’s probably not your fault. You can’t demand space, that’s their job. They can ask and question and demand whatever they want, as long as they don’t leave. You just have to nod and listen. Plead for forgiveness and invalidate your feelings.

And god forbid, if you ever feel hurt by their actions, you simply cannot bring it up. What if they don’t understand? What if they get offended? What if they think you’re too much and finally decide to remove one foot from the door? No, that would be a life-altering tragedy.

It’s better to bottle up your emotions and delete the long confrontational messages you meticulously typed out. After all, that’s the end goal right? Doing whatever it takes to make people stay.

Logically and theoretically, I know how wrong this is. How damaging it is to my self-respect and sense of worth. Nevertheless, I can never manage to defeat the devil. It’s stronger, smarter, and faster. It’s everything I’m not.

One sunny day, last April, I got into a terrible fight with a childhood friend. I had known her for over fifteen years and there was simply no way I could let this friendship go. Some things went down, and I was at fault but so was she.

She decided it was better to cut off, with a kind of finality that shook me. Deleted my number. Unfollowed me on Instagram. Left our WhatsApp group chat. The devil in my brain jumped out of the cage in excitement, it was his time to shine.

I didn’t sleep for two days. I went to her house with our mutual friend, twice. Stood outside the gate - my hands shaking, breath shallow, stomach churning. The world around me seemed to move in perfect order. The trees, lush green and the sky, sweet blue. Yet, my universe was collapsing. I couldn’t see clearly through the gushing, wet tears fogging up my eyes. I wanted to ring the bell, apologise, and beg for her to stay. Say something, anything to change her heart. Nevertheless, I couldn’t bring myself to press the button. No words would form. No thoughts would align.

After thirty minutes or so, her dad entered the balcony and spotted us standing outside. He ushered us inside. We sat in her living room and waited. She exited her room and was stone-cold in her resolve. She simply wanted nothing to do with us. We spent an hour convincing her.

Eventually, my other friend gave up. She accepted reality. Not me, though. I couldn’t. My heart was not strong enough to take the pain of someone leaving. Just a plain goodbye, without any warning.

So, I toiled for an extra hour. Reminded her of all our memories, too precious to be thrown carelessly in the burning flames. I cried. Presented my heart, wrapped up in a bow, free for her to regard or discard. Finally, she caved, rather reluctantly.

The overbearing bricks crushing my chest were suddenly lifted. I smiled for the first time in days and sighed in relief. The trees were green and the sky was now blue, all because I had managed to make one more person stay.

Now that I think back on that day, I don’t feel pride. Or happiness. What I did no longer seems like a victory. It feels strange. It is appalling to me that I was the only one, out of the three of us, standing on the frontlines, using the last bits of my strength to fight for this friendship.

Why was I the only one so deeply wounded? Why was I the only one bleeding raw? Why was my heart the only one breaking?

I often find myself repeating Taylor Swift’s lyrics from “The Archer” that describes this fear perfectly:

I don’t know where this fear stems from. I don’t know how to fight, win, overcome it. Yet, I’m writing this to acknowledge it. Yes, Mr. Devil, I see you. I know you live in the village of my mind. I hope your stay is uncomfortable at the least and I do hope you abandon me!

To put it simply, I don’t think we can fully escape our darkest demons. However, we try, and that’s the bravest thing anyone could ever do.

So, with every wave of anxiety, I keep reiterating a hard-hitting reality: “What’s yours will never leave you. What leaves you was never yours.”

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If you are an anxious person, you’ve probably had one of these phrases directed at you about a million times. You must struggle within the tangled strings of your own mind, and that is something a casual “don’t take stress” just can’t resolve. As someone grappling with anxiety every minute of every day, I experience these minor heartbreaks everyday. And it’s sad.

It’s pretty sad to see how negatively anxious people are perceived in society. Dull, despondent, and despaired. Stressed, strung out, and sleepless.

During one such anxiety-ridden episodes, I sat back and realised something.

Anxious people, like myself, might just be the ones who are the most alive. Yes, they overthink. Over worry. Over share. Over apologise and over analyse. They might be “too much” for many.

But they also over care. They care so much that their veins bleed angry tears when they fight with someone. They resist and contain the urge to immediately call after an argument and say “sorry” like a broken record, even when it might not be their fault.

They struggle with realising their own self-worth, because they value the people they love far more than they value themselves. Which is alarmingly wrong and self-depreciating. Yet, hauntingly beautiful and under-appreciated.

Anxious people are my favourite. Because they feel deep enough to dissect every text message and underlying tone while replaying conversations at 3 AM while others rejoice in the twisted games of nonchalance and ignorance.

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They fear failure and rejection, but that also means they put everything they’ve got in every action, intent, and endeavour. Anything from a small assignment to a big project is like their own mini olympics. If it’s coming from them, you know it’s real blood, sweat, and tears.

Every cell of their body functions in overdrive. Bursting with emotion. Care, guilt, love, and yearning. They are misunderstood, mistaken, and misjudged more times than they can count. Yet, they keep moving through the cold, cold world like tiny, ignited fireflies - glowing in the dark, but often perceived as agitating insects and invariably shunned out.

Nonetheless, those who recognise their light would find their whole world effervescent and sparkling, and I wish, I wish more people saw them for who they are. Preserved and protected their glow, instead of swatting them away.

So, if you’re one of the anxious ones, for what it matters, I see you and I appreciate your imperfectly perfect heart so much. It’s about time you give yourself the same love, grace, and regard that you give to others <3

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“I knew you

Leavin’ like a father

Running like water, I

And when you are young, they assume you know nothing

But I knew you’d linger like a tattoo kiss

I knew you’d haunt all of my what-ifs

The smell of smoke would hang around this long

‘Cause I knew everything when I was young

I knew I’d curse you for the longest time

Chasin’ shadows in the grocery line

I knew you’d miss me once the thrill expired

And you’d be standin’ in my front porch light

And I knew you’d come back to me”

Cardigan by Taylor Swift

There are some moments in life that touch you. Touch you, not in the way a business man shakes the hand of his partner, nor in the way a colleague greets another. Those touches are fleeting, temporary, forgettable. Some experiences, short or long, happy or sad, grand or melancholy - touch you. Touch you in the way a knife pierces through skin and nails scratch through a blackboard.

These experiences leave behind a noise - a noise so poignant, it haunts you in your sleep, screeches through your brain like a broken record, or follows you incessantly like “shadows in a grocery line.”

More often than not, these soul-altering experiences are linked to people. Sometimes, just one person. People who may enter your life like Santa Claus - swinging through an imaginary chimney, bearing gifts, promising joy and sparkle. Filling your days with mirth and laughter, making each one feel like Christmas Eve. Then comes the high - the delight of chasing the adrenaline and tearing through each layer of the wrapping paper. The ecstatic thrill of discovering the gift that lies inside those glittery packages.

The excitement continues as each gift turns out to be bigger and better than before. Sometimes the present is love. Sometimes it’s care. Sometimes it’s validation. As the days pass, every day feels like a celebration.

But then comes the fear. The anticipation of something. Something that could be anything. Anything that could go wrong. After all, Christmas doesn’t last forever. The celebration ends, the party gets over, the drinks eventually get diluted with leftovers of ice, and the food goes cold. The presents are left scattered across the floor, and all that one can do is clean up.

Clean the house, throw the wrapping paper in the trash, mop the floor, and scrape off glitter from the floorboards. Bid goodbye to the guests, sweet talk them into believing you’ll miss their company when really you just wish to be alone. Alone. Away from the noise. The clutter. The high.

When Christmas ends and the New Year approaches, things change. Holidays end, and your brain, accustomed to the high of the cheer, begins to slow down. It goes back into “work mode,” and you realise, unfortunately, Santa Claus wasn’t real. It was a figment of your imagination. Plain old wishful thinking and a lie that was fed to you, because, “when you are young, they assume you know nothing.”

But now you know. Somehow, between Christmas and New Year’s, you grew up. You begin to see the person, the relationship, the memory, the experience - it was all a deceitful hoax. A childhood dream. An unrequited desire. A delusion.

Then the cold comes. The “January” of your life. With no festival, celebration, or cheer viable in the near future. All that remains are the haunting footsteps of Santa Claus. The smell of smoke from their chimney that hangs around your space for way too long. Long enough to disturb you, but not long enough for your fire alarm to ring. So, you learn to bottle up your emotions. Learn to hide and invalidate your experience. Shrug it off, shake it off, rinse, repeat.

But every once in a while, when you step foot into the cafe where you shared a coffee with the “person,” you miss it. You get the same order, exact same. But it tastes different, feels foreign. The caffeinated high is missing, and all that remains is the curdling pang of sour milk.

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You leave the cafe and enter the grocery shop. Shopping always feels therapeutic. Retail therapy and the whole shabang. You enter into your favourite aisle, reach for your trusted packet of cookies, and then the gnawing feeling begins to dawn upon you. You feel eyes on you. Like a shadow tracing your footsteps, and the “Ho Ho Ho” of Santa Claus ringing in your ears - blurring out the small talk of customers and check-out managers and the tic-tac of your pointy heels.

Your Christmas escapade reminds you that you’ve felt this numbing grief before. It all leads back to your hometown. Your Christmas tree farm, where every day growing up, felt like a vacation.

Until one day, jingles were replaced with slamming doors, hot cocoa in the winter morning became broken dishes in the sink, and the “welcome home” mat became dirty and muddy. You lived through it, every single day. Until that day, when the abuses your parents hurled at each other became stronger than the songs playing in your headphones.

That day, when the piercing glass of the plate your father threw across the room cut through your skin. The day your mother decided she’d had enough. The day your father left. And all that was left behind was a gaping hole in your heart.

So, when Santa Claus leaves, you’re reminded of the hole. The vacuum your father left behind. All those letters and emails that remained unanswered, and all the birthdays you waited by the phone. You live and you learn. Slowly, you come to realise that people leave. Some people run like water gushing through the stream, glistening blue and pearl white.

What you don’t realise is that sometimes the tide changes. Sometimes, the current lands those same people right outside your front porch. After all, you weren’t the only one chasing the high.

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