How to See True Colors

iridescent

ˌɪrɪˈdɛs(ə)nt

adjective

showing luminous colours that seem to change when seen from different angles.

Dear Upa,
                 Part of this letter is directed at a certain Korean.
When I was younger and hadn't developed a thought process of my own, pink used to be my favourite colour. 

But as I grew up, I was taught that pink was a colour meant exclusively for girls and blue was a luxury only boys could enjoy. 

Pink was not just for girls, it was for girly girls, and like a lot of girls my age, I refused to be a girly girl. 

Pink, which used to be my favourite colour, was quickly demoted to my least favourite colour because I was not a typical girl. Girls were weak, and they cried a lot, and I was not weak. I was different. I was strong. I was not a girly girl, and pink was not my favourite colour. 

As I grew a little more, I began to realise that colour had no gender, and monopolising colours was just a part of the heteronormative propaganda of the ignorant. I educated myself, formed my own opinions and all that, but pink never became my favourite colour again. 

Maybe deep down I continued to  associate the colour with the childish fear of being labelled as "weak" or "ordinary". Maybe the colour itself wasn't the problem, the problem was the casual look of judgement that flashed across certain people's faces if I ever told them pink was my favourite colour. It shouldn't have mattered, and I thought it didn't. But it did. 

And then you came along, pink flip phone raised proudly in the air, and suddenly I saw colours that I didn't know existed. 

You weren't one of them, you weren't so insecure about your masculinity that you couldn't admit you loved pink. You effortlessly seemed to destroy stereotype after stereotype, so unapologetically yourself that all I could do was look at it all in awe.

Most people said you were golden, magnificent, shining with such lustre that it looked like you had a light of your own. And I agreed with them. 

Sometimes, you were pale blue. Hiding in the background like the sky on the kind of day when no one notices it. Sometimes you were grey, and on these rare occasions you showed some feeling of sadness, which to me was quite surprising because you seemed to be perpetually happy. On some days you were red, like a fire, burning brightly with all the talent and intensity some of us know you are full of, but most of us seem to miss. Sometimes you were colours I didn't know the names of. When you refused to be an adult and did the strangest, inexplicably childish things out of nowhere, you were the colour bubbles became when they reflect sunlight. When you smiled, your usually golden-looking face broke into a kaleidoscope of colours, kind of like still water turning into water with ripples dancing on it. 

And I loved every part of it. I didn't know what kind of love it was, or what it meant, all I knew was that I loved it and it was real. You made me want to be a better person.

You were iridescent. You were the most beautiful mixture of colours I had ever seen, and I couldn't place you in a box. No one could. You showed different colours from every angle people looked at you. You weren't golden, or grey, or pale blue, or even red- you were pink. 

And suddenly, just like that, pink was my favourite colour again.  



PS: I WROTE THIS TWO DAYS BEFORE HE WENT AND DYED HIS HAIR PINK.
HE DYED AND I DIED
HAHAAHA
HAHSHAH
HA

im dead rip me