by Olivia
“Child, get away from the pink room! You will live in a different room now. No need to feel the comfort of bins of toys or scattered towels from bubble baths with rubber duckies.” the voice boomed.
“But I was someone in that room,” the Child protested, clutching the memory like a worn blanket. “Someone who was held. Who was allowed to be small.”
“You were someone safe,” the voice agreed. “But safety isn’t the same as becoming. You want to become, don’t you? Or do you want to stay tucked under covers that no longer fit your size?”
“Becoming isn’t worth the pain of the real world. Can I just skip the next few rooms? Let me be happy in the white room.”
“The white room can only be breached by those who have completed the following rooms: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.”
“One by one?” the Child asked.
“Yes.”
The Child groaned.
“Why do I have to go to red. It just shows heartbreak and danger. Give me a different color.” The Child demanded.
“Child, red is not just danger—it is the color of aliveness. Of risk, yes, but also of love. You risk your heart by stepping into red, by choosing to feel deeply. That might lead to heartbreak… but it also leads to connection, passion, and purpose. Would you really give all that up just to stay safe? Would you skip the room where love lives, just to avoid the chance of pain?”
“Fine. You're right, I wouldn't want to give that up. So at least let me skip orange. The orange room is the place of impatience. All it does is force people to slow down and wait. That sounds unpleasant,” the Child states.
The voice argues: “The orange room allows ambition and excitement to build! Like fire in a hearth, not wildfire in the wind. Without orange, your dreams burn out too fast or never start at all. Orange teaches you how to sustain your desire.”
The Child frowned. “So I need to feel restless to learn control?”
“Yes. The waiting sharpens you. You learn what matters when you can’t have it right away.”
The Child sighed. “Alright… but yellow better be better. Yellow is blinding and loud. All it does is expose things. That feels cruel.”
The voice replied, “Yellow doesn’t expose to shame—it reveals to illuminate. It’s clarity, Child. Joy, too. The yellow room is where you meet your own light. Without it, you walk forward in shadows, even if you’ve made it through red and orange.”
The Child looked down. “So I have to learn to see myself clearly?”
“Yes,” the voice said. “Especially when you don’t like what you see.”
The Child was quiet for a long time. “Green is after that, right? What’s wrong with skipping green?”
“Nothing, if you want to forget how to grow.”
“…Of course,” the Child whispered. “Green is the garden, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” the voice said. “And you are not done becoming.”
“I get it, I have to become something,” the child snapped, a flicker of frustration cutting through. “So just shut up and let me skip blue. I’ll be done growing. And who wants sadness that weighs on someone from the blue room? I heard someone gave up there once.”
The voice did not flinch.
“Yes, someone gave up in the blue room. Because they tried to face sorrow without learning stillness. They mistook feeling deeply for drowning. But blue isn’t meant to pull you under—it teaches you how to breathe under the weight of emotion. It’s the room where grief finds language, where silence teaches strength. You don’t get through life without sorrow, Child. But in the blue room, you learn how to carry it with grace.”
The Child’s eyes filled but didn’t spill. “What if I stay there too long?”
“You will. Everyone does,” the voice answered softly. “But eventually, the walls of the blue room teach you wisdom and power of emotions. And in that quiet, you’ll hear the door to purple open.”
The Child hesitated. “And purple?”
“Purple is where the fragments become one again. Where mystery and meaning meet. But you can only enter it once you’ve lived every color before it. Every room leaves a mark. Purple gathers them. And you, Child, are the canvas.”
The Child stood still, heart trembling. “And the white room?”
The voice almost smiled.
“The white room is not an escape. It’s not peace because nothing ever hurt—it’s peace because everything did, and you survived it with your colors intact.”
“So every color matters?” the Child considered.
The Child stood there and gave up the battle between them and the voice.
“I’m ready to leave the pink room.”
The Child stepped forward—not with eagerness, but with understanding. Along the way the shades of pain, joy, stillness, fire, and becoming will collect to create their story of life. There would be no skipping. No shortcuts into different rooms. Just the slow, aching, glorious work of growing into a life that could hold every color—and still reach the white room transformed.