I’ve been wearing glasses since I was born.

They’re invisible, no one can see them but they are there. 

Everyone knows I have them, but no one knows how magnifying they really are. 

I have a hard time seeing without them, and to me it’s heartbreaking to take them off, but sometimes it’s necessary so I don’t feel the pain that other people cause me by painting them blue.

These glasses are special, they saturate colors. They saturate them so much that looking through them can make me cry.

I see the world with radiance, and that fills me with endless exuberance.

But ignorance is bliss, and for good reason. The more I look at the bold colors, I realize not all of them are bright. I notice most are dark and grave. Some are somber. Some are aggressive.

I learned to paint over those colors to make them bright again, but the paint washes off and I’m forced through hellish travail.

I am coming to the understanding that I can’t keep painting the blue walls yellow, and the red walls into a calm turquoise. I can’t, and I turn into a green.

I end up so tired that I can no longer paint myself. And I end up just looking through my glasses which are colored with empathy.

I hope I’ll be able to learn to live with the colors, because these glasses have become stuck to my face, and it will take a long time to finally take them off; so long that I won’t try. 

I want to see colors. I want to wear these glasses, even if it hurts, because seeing all the colors is worth it.

It’s worth it even if nobody sees it.