You Know Me Well

by Nina LaCour

When I was little I loved to paint— the brush was a plastic wand with a punk-rock haircut at its tip, while the colors sat like candies in their tray. If you wanted orange, you’d introduce red to yellow. If you wanted green, yellow would have an affair with blue. Like any kid who isn’t encouraged to question, I had been taught the meaning of colors— blue and pink, most of all. We all knew which one princesses wore. We all knew why I was given so many princesses to paint. But one day I wondered what would happen if I mixed the pink and the blue. One day I reached down to the level of curiosity, having no idea that it was standing on the shoulders of truth. I thought blue and pink would make the most spectacular color— I took my wand and gathered the blue, laying it on the absorbent page of a coloring book bought to keep me quiet in a Walmart. Then, without washing the wand clean, I dipped into the pink. This, I was sure, would be the secret to all beauty. What happened was mud, dirty sidewalk, murk. I had failed. I pulled away from my curiosity, and the truth underneath. I trusted other people to teach me the meaning of colors, and they taught me the wrong things. It took a long time for the truth to rise up, and for me to rise up to meet it. I took out my old paints and I mixed those colors again. I got the same result, but this time I saw it a different way. Blue and pink make mud, make dirt, make rock. I am mud, I am dirt, I am rock. I am nature, a force of nature. I am ...

the heart is a treacherous beast, but it means well.

Hiding and denying and being afraid is no way to treat love. Love demands bravery.

Here we come—through hard days and good ones, through despair and through exhilaration, in love and out of love, for just now or for forever. Here we come. It’s our parade.