She Was My Colour

1: Meeting her

Lisa had always been that one sparkle of joy people needed constantly in their life like a never ending adrenaline, to keep them positive and ready for their day. It wasn't until the year she turned 15 that she had ischaemic stroke unknowingly, causing her brain to take damage and her visual field to be lost as time went by.

Her parents were devastated, she was devastated. A long painful 5 months later and she recovered from the stroke, going into stroke rehabilitation and missing school for more than half a year. The money invested for treatment was mind-blowing and her parents had no choice but to loan from banks, being in debt right after.

Ever since the day she learnt and realised her sight of colours was slowly deteriorating, Lisa was never the radiant bubbly princess she used to be. She became quiet and demurred. It wasn't that she gave up on life, it was just demoralising to know a huge part of you was slowing disappearing.

And it was worst for her than for most people.

The nerve of her eyes as a result of brain damage caused cerebral achromatopsia— a rare condition preventing her from seeing any form of colour. Meaning, in time, she would lose her entire vision of colours. No, it wasn't just a colourblind issue, it was all the colours she could see.

Her family being in dept for the treatment, rehab and therapy she had to go through, then made her want to find a job and work part-time while she did school. She wasn't forced, and her parents even tried to stop her from doing so since she just recovered from a painstaking stroke process, but personally, she felt bad.

They were in debt, because of her.

And so the least they could do as her parents was support her unwillingly and caution her to be careful at all times not to overwork herself.

She managed to find a Japanese restaurant by the streets of her house hiring for immediate crew. And if she was the bright, peppy her as before, she would no doubt opt for the service crew position since she absolutely hated cooking.

Nah, she just couldn't cook.

But now, she didn't want to talk to anyone, she hated that her sight of colours was fading and she didn't want people to judge if she served something wrong. So instead, she applied for the kitchen crew. Surprisingly enough, she got the job. She didn't want to tell her manager she couldn't recognise colours, in case she became a laughing stock in the kitchen so she forced herself to try and remember the looks and colours of the different food types.

A week in and she's messed up several times.

Though she was really trying her best.

Sometimes she even went home after work crying to herself for mistaking the pork as the chicken cutlet, since she was starting to be unable to tell them apart.

And it was worst because there wasn't anyone in the kitchen crew that was of her age or even similar age. The rest were all old, or older frail mad grannies and grandpas that screamed across the kitchen when there was an order, which was probably going to cause Lisa to end up loosing her sense of hearing along with her colour vision by the time she quits.

But she chose to live with it.

What's life if you haven't experienced real life before?

Lisa was starting to live with her colour deficiency as well. At first she cried almost everyday. Well 'at least she isn't going blind' she thought on the bright side.

But as each day passes by, and as each morning haunts her, she wakes up to realise that the colour of her toothbrush wasn't how it used to look like the day before. When she tried making herself toast one day her mom was out, she put on kaya— which she hated, instead of nutella. And when she took a bite, she spat the entire thing out disgusted. Lisa also couldn't rely on recognising the colours of her notebooks anymore and had to take the time out to label them one by one. She mistook her brother's shoes as her's since they got the same pair, and only realised when her legs were too big to fit in.