Think of your heart like a room. It's white and perfect like a brand new house. Then, you meet that first boy, and he moves into the new house painting the room blue. This is the kind of love you learn later in life is not meant to last, but when you're young, you don't know the difference. This boyish color won't hold up in the future, but everyone deserves that first type of "love" that they think is real, but really isn't. It's the first introduction we have to the human emotion of romantic love.
A couple years go by and that boy leaves. You're told this is normal and that soon, the scars will mend, and you'll love again. But, the room is still blue. There are some scratches where his suitcase hit the wall as he left, but other than that, it's still the way he painted it when he came. It's too hard to paint the walls back to white, so you figure you'll just find another "tenant" who likes blue. You leave the furniture where he left it, and you try not to move anything because you enjoy the feeling of knowing that it still looks like he could come home at any time.
For awhile, no one lives in the house because you can't even think about letting someone else live there. Then, one day, you decide you're ready, and you put the "for rent" sign in the front window. A new tenant comes in, but he wants to change things. See, he likes tan. He believes it to be a more mature color, and he doesn't like the boyish color of blue. You tell him if he changes things, no deal and move on to the next guy.
Sure enough, along comes a boy who likes blue. So, he moves in. But, just like the guy before him, he soon moves out leaving a couple of knickknacks behind. The room is a faded blue now, but the furniture is still in the same spot, and you leave it just like you did the last time. This cycle happens a couple more times, and you wonder why it is that you're going in circles. You feel like you're dating the same guy over and over again...
Then, one day you look up and realize that it's been years, but the room is still painted blue. Every guy left a picture or a knickknack to remember them by, and now your heart is crowded with all this baggage. You can't move on to a relationship that lasts because you have all these addendums in the rental agreement not to mention the fact that you're only renting. No one can purchase the house that is your heart, so they can keep it forever, because you won't let them make it their own.
You start sorting through things, and you find all these dings from all the people that have come and gone. Now it's clear that you thought you liked those guys because they were right for you, but in hindsight, you know you only liked them for the color blue. It wasn't about all those guys at all, but only about the fact that you never repainted the walls.
Now, you've come to resent the color blue. You hate how the stingy color has greyed over the years, and you wish you could paint it, but there's too much stuff in the way. So, now comes the hard part. The part where you box up all of their things and throw them in the trash. You know that you have to accept the fact that he's never coming back. It's time to move on for good.
So tonight, don't leave the porch light on. Instead, take all the boxes and throw them away. Then, paint the room white. Once the room is returned to white, take a deep breath and put the house up for sale. When you do, all you can hope is that the boy who wanted to buy the house and paint it tan is still around. Now you can see that tan is safe. Tan is soothing, and tan doesn't fade with time. It hides the scratches better, and it isn't brash like blue. Tan is the guy who will stay. Blue is flashy, but it doesn't stay that blue forever.
One day, you'll realize that you're happy with the new furniture, and that tan has become your favorite color. Blue will come knocking asking if you still have the shorts he left behind, and he won't even recognize the house because you sold it to someone else. He'll sit on the stoop, and the regret will hit him hard as he realizes that he should never have left you the way he did. You could be mad that he didn't come back sooner, or you can realize that who he was and who he is are two very different people. Blue was fun when you were kids, but now blue hurts your eyes. Flashy was a good time once, but you can't build a life on bright colors and sparkling lights. Life is tan. Life is steady. Life is something consistent that will never leave you.
Years later, when the house is old, it will still be the same tan color it was before. He'll have kept it up so well that you won't see a ding anywhere. There won't be all kinds of marks on the walls because he never carried suitcases through those halls, and when he did scratch the wall, he quickly painted over it with an apology.
Blue was beautiful when you were pink, but tan is perfect when you realize that blue leaves you, and you're becoming more of an orange.
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