The Dreamer's Pen

I don’t know why color and sunlight speak to me the way they do. I’ve tried to put it into words a million times, and I never get it right, because it’s not really something you can explain. It’s something you feel. It’s in your chest, your spine, and the way your skin tingles when light hits something just right!!

It’s in the way your breath shifts when you see a deep raspberry against a crisp navy, or the way your heart lifts when sunlight catches silver threads, or the way your brain hums a little higher when a chartreuse scarf glints at the corner of your vision. It’s not just visual. It’s alive. It moves through me.

I don’t know why jewel tones feel like home. Sapphire, ruby, emerald, amethyst, navy, raspberry, yellow, purple, chartreuse, and silver. These aren’t just colors to me. They’re a pulse. They’re a rhythm. They’re a vibration in my body that matches something inside me I can’t even name.

When I see them together, layered, clashing, shimmering, I feel like I am breathing in life itself. Sunlight makes it more. Sunlight on these colors, sunlight on shimmer, sunlight on iridescence, it’s like the world suddenly exists in three dimensions I didn’t know I could perceive. It moves. It shifts. It dances. And I move with it.

I’ve always loved light, the way it hits things, makes things glow, makes them feel alive. Even as a little girl, I would sit by the window for hours, tracing sunlight on my desk, on my stickers, on the edges of my Lisa Frank notebooks.

I’d watch it shimmer and fold and scatter, and I would feel it in my chest like it was spilling inside me. Color without light is something, sure, but color with sunlight? That’s alive. That’s full. That’s breathing. That’s the part of me that says, “yes, this is everything, this is what it’s supposed to feel like, this is the pulse of life, of being, of existing, and of me.”

I love the shimmer, the glint and the iridescence. The way sunlight hits something and it almost moves on its own. Patterns that swirl, colors that twist, shimmer that shifts.

I didn’t even like psychedelic swirls until I was in my twenties, but once I discovered them, oh, I adored them. I still do. They feel like energy you can see. They feel like a heartbeat made visual. They feel like joy, chaos, and wonder compressed into something tangible. They feel like me.

I have never understood the minimalism, the gray, the beige, the grayge. The whole “quiet sophistication” trend. It crushes me. It flattens me. It makes my chest ache.

I can do white if it’s crisp, but white needs color with it like a navy or something bold. Something that sings.

Beige and gray are empty. They’re quiet in a way that shrinks your chest instead of opening it.

They feel like a wall I can’t get around. And I have spent my life learning that I just cannot live like that. I won’t live like that. Color and sunlight are my oxygen, my pulse, my energy, my joy, my grounding.

I feel good in color. I always have. Jewel tones, bright contrasts, swirls, iridescence, and shimmer. They just activate me. They make me sit taller, breathe deeper, notice everything, and feel everything. Raspberry energizes me. Chartreuse sharpens me. Navy steadies me. Yellow lifts me. Purple expands me. Silver reflects me. I don’t know why exactly but my body knows. My chest knows. My nervous system knows. And when sunlight hits all of it?

The effect is almost indescribable. It’s like my soul is breathing through my eyes and my skin, all at once.

I was always that little girl who loved color. I didn’t follow trends. I didn’t try to blend in. I loved all the crayons in the box, all the stickers, all the shimmer, all the shine, all the things that moved in sunlight. I loved the rainbow. I loved the chaos. I loved the brightness. And I still do. Even now. Even as an adult. Even when the world tries to tell me muted colors are “classy” or “grown up.” I can’t get behind it. I never could. I have to live in color. I have to feel sunlight on it. I have to feel it in my chest. I have to feel it alive.

Color and sunlight aren’t decoration. They aren’t fashion. They aren’t even aesthetic preferences. They’re survival. They’re joy. They’re pulse. They’re vitality. They’re the part of life that makes me feel awake in my own skin. They’re the part of life that lets me notice myself, notice the world, notice the beauty, notice the chaos, notice the shimmer, and notice the wonder. They’re the part of life that says, “You exist. You are here. You matter. You are alive.”

Sunlight makes it more than color. It makes it breathing. It makes it kinetic. It makes it almost sacred. Sunlight on a swirling pattern makes the pattern pulse. Sunlight on a jewel tone makes the jewel tone deeper, richer, alive. Sunlight on shimmer makes the shimmer move as if it were alive, as if it knew I was there to witness it. And when that happens, I am awake in ways that nothing else can do. I feel it in my chest, my breath, my heartbeat, my skin, and in my bones. I feel it in my mind and in my spirit. I feel it in the deep, quiet part of me that is always restless, always searching, always alive.

I can’t explain it fully. I can’t ever fully describe it. And I don’t want to. I just know it. I know it in my chest. I know it in my nerves. I know it in the way my body shifts when sunlight hits color. I know it in the way my soul opens when I see something layered, bold, jewel toned, iridescent, psychedelic, shimmering, chaotic, vibrant, and alive. I know it in the way my imagination hums, my joy pulses, and my body feels awake. I know it in the way I cannot live without it.