My Soul Is Blue

There are colors that live inside of people, woven into their being like an unspoken truth. Mine has always been blue. It is in the way I move, the way I think, the way I love. It is in the songs that play when the world is too loud, in the echo of my mother’s voice when she calls my name. It is in the silence of midnight when the only sound is my breath and the weight of everything I have ever felt. My soul is blue—deep, endless, sometimes peaceful, sometimes terrifying, like the ocean at its darkest depth.

I was born into blue, cradled in the arms of a woman whose voice was soft but whose love was steel. My mother, with her eyes full of storms and her hands that knew how to hold and let go all at once. She painted the walls of my childhood with warmth, with safety, with the kind of love that lingers long after you leave. But even love like hers could not protect me from the sadness that found me too soon, from the weight of a world that never quite felt like home.

There is something about the way I exist that has always felt too heavy, too much. I carry emotions like an ocean carries waves—constant, crashing, swallowing me whole. I feel love in a way that drowns me, in a way that makes me gasp for air, in a way that terrifies me because I do not know how to let go once I have held on. I have loved people who never knew how to swim in a heart like mine. I have watched them drift away, gasping, begging for a shore I could never give them.

And yet, despite all the ways love has wrecked me, I am still made of it. My mother taught me that. She taught me that love is not in grand gestures or fleeting words but in the quiet things—in the way she hummed while making tea, in the way she kissed my forehead before bed, in the way she stayed even when the world became unbearable. She was my first understanding of blue, of love that does not demand, of water that does not drown but carries you home.

I see blue in everything that reminds me I am still alive. In the songs that make my chest ache, in the sky before a storm, in the ocean that never stops moving. Music is the only thing that has ever truly understood me. The chords, the lyrics, the way a melody can press into my ribs like a memory I cannot escape. My playlist is a map of everything I have ever felt, of every love I have ever lost, of every version of myself I have had to bury. Each song is a piece of me, proof that I was here, that I felt, that I loved, even when it hurt.

But blue is not just love. It is also the shadow that lingers in the quiet moments, the fear that curls itself around my heart in the dead of night. There are parts of me that are terrifying, even to myself. Parts of me that know how to disappear, that know how to become small enough to fit into spaces I do not belong. I have spent years running from my own reflection, afraid of the person staring back at me, afraid of the emptiness behind my eyes.

There is a loneliness that comes with feeling too deeply, with carrying the weight of the world inside your chest. I have learned that people fear things they cannot understand, and I have never been easy to understand. I do not know how to exist without feeling everything all at once, without drowning in my own mind. I have lost people because of this. I have spent years apologizing for the way my heart beats, for the way my sadness lingers in rooms even after I leave.

I have stood at the edge of myself more times than I can count, staring into the abyss of my own thoughts, wondering if I would ever find a way back. I have known the kind of sadness that makes time irrelevant, the kind that turns days into a blur, that makes the world feel too sharp, too cruel, too much. I have begged the universe for relief, for a sign that I was meant to stay. And yet, every time, something pulls me back—sometimes it is my mother’s voice, sometimes it is a song, sometimes it is simply the thought that maybe, just maybe, the blue inside of me is not meant to destroy me, but to save me.

I am learning that blue is not just sadness. It is also softness. It is the way the ocean kisses the shore, even after being pushed away a thousand times. It is the way the sky opens itself up to the sun, even after the longest night. It is the way my mother’s love lingers, even in the moments when she is not there.

I am learning that my soul is blue not because I am broken, but because I am vast. Because I am deep. Because I am capable of holding love and loss and still finding a way to keep going.

Some days, I still feel like I am drowning. Some days, the weight of my own mind is unbearable. But even on those days, I remind myself that the ocean never stops moving, that the sky never stops changing, that music never stops playing.

And neither will I.