My Yellow Paint

Edited by – Shivani Panigrahy

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”

Yellow paint is said to represent happiness and sunshine. Vincent Van Gogh, it is said, loved the colour yellow so much, that he used it in almost all his paintings. He believed using the paint would make him happy, and it did, until this desire soon turned into a need for more, and eventually led him to try consuming the paint itself. People labeled him insane and warned him about its toxicity, but he remained unperturbed, and this seemingly silly addiction led to his death.

Someone very close to me told me about this story, calling it the ‘Yellow Paint Theory’. She told me there can be people or things that fill us with happiness and lift us up, that still may prove to be very toxic for us. Whether it was the paint itself that ended up killing Vincent, or his unending, almost consuming dependency on it that did the deed, I’m not sure. All I know for sure is that it isn’t worth having that faux happiness for a little while if it’s only going to end up without colours.

We all have our own yellow paint, whether it’s a person we keep going back to, whether it’s a guilty pleasure we like to hide from the rest of the world, or whether it’s just a habit we can’t seem to get rid of because we can’t imagine life without it. The existence of this yellow paint is seldom realised by us, and that’s what keeps us in denial of the fact that it’s not actually good for us. Sometimes we know exactly what it’s doing to us, and yet we keep going on, simply because we just can’t go back to life before the yellow strokes filled it with emotions. 

My yellow paint has always been people, and the hardest part of that is that you never realise what they were doing to you until they’re out of your life, and realising that they’re out hits worse than the fact that they were toxic for you. Yellow paint leaves marks sometimes, it’s hard to remove once it’s been spilled on a canvas. All that you can do is fill the canvas with colours till you can’t see the yellow anymore. I have tried it all, but what a waste! To have all that yellow and still want to cover it up. Once you stop consuming yellow paint, it’s important to realise it wasn’t the paint that was the issue, but the fact that it was in your life. You don’t have to get rid of everything that you felt with it, all you need to let go of is the paint itself. People leave scars, but instead of hiding them, I say look at them and be proud of how far you have come. Instead of filling the canvas up with colours, add a little blue, a stroke of green here and there, and create a landscape out of it. Don’t distract yourself from what you feel. Feel it. Feel it and grow from it. The best part of having a ‘yellow paint’ is how it teaches you things no one ever could. It breaks you in ways that help you grow and heal better than you ever thought you could. It helps you realise what’s good for you and what’s not, but most importantly, you realise that there are other colours to fill your canvas with than just yellow. 

Often, I have seen, the problem is that we fail to see all the colours in people. All we see is the yellow that gives us joy and the moment we see even traces of something else it sends us in a spiral, as it did to Vincent, eventually leading him to eat yellow until nothing else remained. This might just be a legend but I have seen more than enough realities in my life to know that consuming yellow paint till it breaks you is not uncommon.

I moved past my yellow and found a vibrant mix of blue, brown, violet, and sometimes even bright pink, and now I know I have so much more to look forward to in life than just feigning happiness. There are still traces of yellow, and there probably always will be, but my canvas is complete, and as long as I keep growing, I’ll always have room for more. So the next time you love someone, love them for all they are, not just the yellow you see. I found my kaleidoscope, I hope you find yours.

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