Love In Colour

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: MOTIVATIONAL BULLSHIT & THERAPY JOURNALS

I've always hated motivational speakers with a burning passion. There's nothing that they can sell that I would ever want to buy. I hated how they would tell you that all the suffering is worth it and that there has to be a storm before you reach the calm. How everything happens for a reason, and that there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

Every single time in school when the guidance counsellors would invite a motivational speaker, I would try not to attend. I pretended to have a headache and excused myself. Hearing anything motivational while having the life that I was living would make me seethe with anger. Because to me, they had great lives and usually faced challenges that they could overcome, and that somehow gave them a reason to tell us.

Actually, I still do have a hatred for them. I've faced a lot of stuff in life, and I have never once thought that I should tell people about my problems and how I faced them just to make money. Many people readily fall for manipulation because they eagerly fill venues to be told that their circumstances and surroundings are fated and that they should find beauty in their struggles. Millions of people buy these books by these speakers, and the books are just the same old thing. Each person is regurgitating what the others have already said.

With everything that I have been through, all I can say is that you can find a way out. Be it living through the pain or taking yourself out of the equation (obviously, I mean suicide). And I would never judge a person who commits, I know exactly how dark the human mind can get. As much as society and religion look down upon it, I don't, and I don't think that it's a cowardly way to go. I have so much respect for those people, and I think taking that decision is one way that you have control over how everything ends.

As much as I still find motivational speakers abhorrent, they were right about one thing–it does get better. Not instantaneously or easily, but it does get better. Depending on you, your environment, and the surrounding people.

You never know how much light is at the end of the tunnel until you hear the voices of those who love and want you around to cheer you on. I'm lucky to have such people. I am eternally grateful to the universe for Bentley, Rhys, and Grayson. They are beautiful souls, and if reincarnation is real, I want to meet them again in another life.

Motivational speakers were always cheap metaphors, a platitude for people who'd never truly suffered; they still are, but now I understand. The light isn't a destination. It's not a switch that flips, not a sunrise that burns away the dark. It's incremental. It's the slow accumulation of small moments. A hand on your shoulder, a text at 2 AM, a whispered "I love you" in the aftermath of devastation.

I close the journal and set it down on the nightstand. The words hit heavy in my chest—not with weight, but with truth. I meant every single one of them. The hatred for motivational speakers is unchanged. The complicated respect for those who choose their own ending, undiminished. The gratitude for the people who pulled me back from the edge is overflowing.

Bentley. Rhys. Grayson.

These three men have saved me in three different ways. Bentley, who moved in with me in that shitty apartment and refused to let me disappear. Rhys, who taught me that family isn't about blood but about who shows up when everything falls apart. And Grayson, who saw me fall to pieces and whispered love into the wreckage.

I look over at him, sleeping beside me. His face relaxed, peaceful, one arm stretched across the space between us, like even in sleep, he's reaching for me. The moonlight catches the edge of his jaw, the slope of his shoulder, the steady rise and fall of his chest.

A beautiful soul, I wrote. And he is. They all are.

***

The next morning, sunlight pours out of the window, warm and golden. Grayson is already awake, propped up on one elbow, watching me with that soft look he gets when he thinks I'm not looking.

"Good morning," I say, my voice a bit hoarse with sleep.

He smiles a little. "Good morning," he replies. "You were up late. I felt you get out of bed."

"Couldn't sleep. I wrote for a while."

"Write anything good?"

My mind goes back to the journal entry. The hatred, hope, and gratitude tangled together on the page. "Something honest," I reply truthfully. "That's the best I can do these days."

He leans down and kisses me, soft and slow. "Honesty is good. Honesty is all I ask for."

We have breakfast together–pancakes, because it's Saturday and we have nowhere to be and nothing to do but exist in each other's company. I'm standing at the stove, flipping the last batch, when Gray's phone buzzes next to me on the counter.

"Babe, you have a text from Siya!" I yell out.

He walks out of his home office and comes to check the text. I place the pancakes on our plates when Gray looks up from his screen, his brows furrowed. "What's up?"

"Siya wants to come over with Jake to chill."

I stand in front of him and wrap my arms around his torso. "Then why do you look troubled?"

His gaze finds mine. "Because today is our day."

I nod, but I am not against his friends coming over. "They can come, I'll text Ben and Rhys to see if they might want to join everybody. We can make a whole day out of it."

He thinks about it for a moment and then nods. "Only if you're sure."

Standing on my tiptoes, I wrap my hands around his neck, and he leans down so I don't strain myself. "I'm really sure. It'll be fun." I place a kiss on his lips, which he turns into a deep and slow one. My feet are off the floor as he lifts me and puts me on the countertop, and he stands ‌between my legs. My fingers tangle in his hair, and when I pull at it a bit hard, he groans and bites my bottom lip. We pull away, and he seems relaxed. "Okay. I'll let them know."

While Gray types out a response, I text Ben and Rhys.

Me: Wanna hang out at Gray's place?

The response is swift.

Ben: Hell yeah! When can we come by?

Me: 2 pm alright with ya'll?

Ben: Perfect! Do we need to bring anything?

Me: Just yourselves.

After I press send, I observe Grayson. His thumb moves quickly across the screen. The furrow between his brows finally soothing out. There's something about the way he relaxes—shoulders dropping, jaw unclenching—that makes me want to pull him back in, to keep him right here between my legs where he belongs.

But the pancakes are getting cold.

"You're staring," he says, not looking up from his phone.

I smile. "I'm admiring."

"Same thing," he says.

"It's really not." I hop off the counter and grab the plates. "Admiring has intent. Staring is just...vacant."

He looks up then, one eyebrow raised. "And what's the intent behind the admiration?"

I set the plates on the table and turn to face him, leaning against the back of a chair. "That I'm ridiculously attracted to you and I'm not sure you understand the depths of it."

He crosses the kitchen in three strides, takes my face in his hands, and kisses again; shorter this time, but no less intense. "I understand," he murmurs against my lips. "Trust me. I understand."

I laugh, pushing him gently toward his seat. "Eat your pancakes, Casanova. You're going to need your strength for all this socialising you just agreed to."

He sits, but his eyes stay on me as I move around the kitchen, pouring syrup, fetching butter, filling two glasses with orange juice. There's a warmth in his gaze. A wonder that still catches me off guard, and it makes me deeply think about having another lifetime with him. I hope I find him in every dimension and in every multiverse.

I want to come back to this. To Saturday mornings and pancakes and the way he looks at me across a table.