about the colour pink and growing up

As a little girl, I was living in a pink world.
My room had pink wallpaper. I wore pink jumpers and my trousers were patched at the knees with pink hearts. I played with Barbies who wore pink dresses and drove a pink car and imagined that one day, when I was grown up, I would own one myself. My Fillys lived in a pink castle. I slept surrounded by pink pillows and blankets and dreamt of pink sheep.
I was brave and believed that nothing could ever stop me.

But time passed and I got older. My pink jumper got too small, the pink hearts on my trousers were now also worn through and my mum threw them away. The Barbies found a new home in a box in the basement.
The walls of my room turned green and eventually white. My world turned white, with a grey duvet and a rough beige carpet.
And I realised what the world actually was like. It was not how I had envisioned it in my dreams — a pink world in which people treated each other with mutual respect and where equity and kindness prevailed.

Pink pigs were held captive, the pink sunset gave way to a pitch-black night. The fallen petals of pink cherry blossoms were carelessly walked upon. Nature, animals and people of different religions, sexual orientations, social or cultural backgrounds and minorities were being trampled over without a care. Plants, animals and people who were being oppressed, tortured and murdered solely because of their existence. In this world prevailed injustice, discrimination, racism... and hatred.

Hatred for the colour pink.

I was faced with this grey world and felt helpless. The grey of the world had also seeped through the cracks in my walls, taken away my will and drive and turned my room, my clothes and my perspective grey.

But then one day I was overcome with anger at my lack of power.
Something had to change. Starting with my surroundings. The wallpaper. I began to fight my way through the different layers. Grey gave place to white, then green and lastly... pink?
I faltered.
Memories and feelings that had been buried under layers of paint for years started to resurface. The warm afternoon sun bathed my dark grey room in a bright pink glow. I remembered the fearless girl who had been convinced that one day she would conquer the world. What had become of her? When and where had the pink colour disappeared from my life?

The pink wallpaper was cracked and faded, yet it was still the strongest colour in my room. I began to long. I longed for the light-heartedness I had lost. I missed the pink hearts on my trousers and the pink Filly horse whose wings glowed in the dark.
I was missing the colour pink.

However, I was unable to paint the existing world pink again. I wanted and still want to create a new place where I can bring the colour back into my life, stroke by stroke. I want to see pink again when I wake up in the morning, to scrape pink colour residues out from under my nails again, to have hope again and the strength to make the grey of the world more bearable and to conquer the future.