When I was younger, my mind was filled with colors. Vibrant streams of color that would lick around each other as thoughts and dreams leaned together for support. They’d pull and bend, folding and growing. They’d ache with the desire to be known, and squeal with the pure enjoyment of living. Living! The colors were leaps of energy, wondrous at the possibility of making something from my own brilliant mind.

But now.

Now it is different.

Now, there are cracks. Jagged edges of shades of gray and black that enclose holes; chasms where the colors have seeped through, curious enough to fall into the unknown depths. The colors are all but gone, hopeless to the clutch of the dismal grays. Shadows cascade in complexity, heavy and light, faint and prominent.

But in some places, at just the right moment, remnants of the colors that once existed can be seen. In corners and edges, and under layers of black, there is still color, bursting with life. It sighs once found, as if to welcome me home, knowing I’d fit back into their promising hold eventually. Blues and pinks squeeze into the cracks, acting as a mold to maintain the minimal rainbow that still lives. Oranges and greens breathe in the scent of leaves soaked with rain and glide across deserted passageways.

My brain is comprised of patchwork. A place where the dismal and exuberant reluctantly sit side by side. There are places of such intensity and ebullience that I laugh at the bubbling joy they bring. There are edges that are unforgiving - ones willing to cut into corners of my brain as they form. And yet, while these gray spikes can penetrate sweet thoughts that dance by, causing red to spill from each creation, color is made. Whether by accident or intent, red is formed. Color. It plumes from the penetrated dreams that once lived; and while those dreams have faded, they have given way to such a color that has never been seen by my own mind before. The red sweeps across smooth edges of my brain, bringing new life and color in its wake.

Beauty from disaster. Purpose from hopelessness. Color from darkness.

That is my brain.