Ever have those days where you start off just fine then slowly disintegrate into a mushy pile of apathy?
Feeling begins as a rush of colour; you smile freely and go about your routine, excited for the day. Everything is bright as you dress and wash and step out of your cocoon of warmth and sleep-daze.
Breakfast is lacklustre, however. You need to go shopping. A little colour leeches out, but with some quick improvisation, it's back full force and the meal is saved!
Cleaning the house is next on your agenda and while you work, you can feel the pains and aches of your bones returning from their brief hibernation. The edges of your world become bleached and spotted with grey. Medication is a quick relief; a couple pills and a drink freshen you up, but the colour doesn't return this time.
Lunch arrives with little fanfare. A frozen meal is the best option in consideration with the cabinetry being full of parts with no conjunction. The waiting seeps more of your world away. You now watch your surroundings with a jaded eye--tunnel vision of colour. It's black at the edges and grey everywhere else.
Enough to make your stomach churn.
Maybe just a small lunch today.
Enough to keep going.
Just enough.
You clean more. It hurts to do the small acts of picking up: palms burning, joints aching, bones creaking with every movement.
When was the house this cold?
You don't have an answer.
Everything is grey now. Heartbeat slowing to a dull thump-a-thump, you aimlessly wander to your bed. Blankets pile on. It's so cold now and you can't get up to make it warm.
It hurts.
Time passes quickly and dinner looms over you like an executioner. Dragging yourself out of bed was so easy earlier, why can't you move now? A fake smile is plastered upon your face.
"Fake it til you make it", right?
Wrong.
The meal is picked over; just a plate for tonight. Eat just a plate and you can go.
The walls fall once you're alone. There's a hole in your chest where the colour was. All you can feel is cold.
It's time for bed, now, and it takes the remaining dregs of energy you have to bundle yourself in blankets.
Why couldn't you have done more today?
Ah.
You know why.
You lost all your colours.
