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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Mondays are the best days! Like, aren’t you excited about the start of a new week? It’s like a new chapter in a book.
If Monday were a color, she’d be red. Crisp, striking, vivid, you couldn’t miss her—a bull’s-eye in the room, a crackling flame. I saw so much red that it blinded me to any flags.
You were made to light up this world, not to be cooped up in the house. I may not have said it right, but that’s all I want for you, Sweet Pea.” I swallowed, lacing my fingers together. “What if I fail my . . . mission? What if I’m not as special as everyone thinks I am?” Daddy reached over and held my hand. “Well, I’m here to catch you every time you think you’re about to fall. That’s what daddies are supposed to
the weeks slipped through my fingers before I could catch them, inspect them. What’s wrong with this picture? What’s missing? But then a song would come on the radio or I would spy a splash of pink, and I would remember my missing limb.
Once red, she became a starless sky, an endless midnight, a hole in the universe swallowing up the world, leaving everyone blind. Onyx, ebony, jet black.
“But I didn’t save her,” I said, bursting into tears. “I couldn’t save her.” “You did save her, Claudia! You saved her from that house for years and you didn’t even know it.”
I cried. It’s true. Sometimes we can only save people for a little bit, not for as long as we want. But it still matters. I feel that as an abuse survivor who has siblings who died as a result of their emotional trauma.
If I was a color, I would be white, vast in my blankness. Pure, whole, virginal, predictable . . . Boring. The colors thrown at me didn’t bleed into my canvas and leave a mark. The colors washed out with nothing but water. That’s what made this story so hard to remember. It’s hard facing a mirror and seeing all you are made of and all you couldn’t absorb. But I’m open to be changed. To be in a place where I can hold all the colors I love at once, appreciate what they are, and learn from them. I’m open to new beginnings.
I wore nothing but blue and black. Any other color reminded me too much of Monday. Still felt a pinch of guilt whenever I saw pink.
I jumped in the car, kissed Michael, and we drove off, cranking up Daddy’s newest song. With Monday humming along.
