As readers, we thrive off of a morally grey character. In their flaws we see our own, and therefore feel known. It’s a beautiful thing when you can form a connection with them, walk through worlds with them. Stop and analyze their hazel eyes where you’ll notice a familiar glow. The love felt for a morally grey character isn’t because of their faults, and it isn’t despite of them either. A character’s poor decision is followed with watchful eyes. Eyes that resemble our own. Eyes that follow the page the way a mother watches a child. Watching every trip and every triumph.
The love for a morally grey character is felt because you can’t paint skies of grey with nothing but white paint. A flooded brush of white will only ever bring white. It’s when you begin mixing paints that you start forming shapes. How beautiful a foggy day, and the depth it creates. Why then, shouldn’t we love ourselves in the same way? It is not because of my best qualities or achievements that I love myself, nor for my mistakes. Without the bold slashes of charcoal and specks of gold, without the smudges of green under a clouding bronze, these eyes wouldn’t be hazel, and they wouldn’t be mine. I love myself as I am, a beautiful and messy combination of my merits and my flaws- because I am grey.

I have this memory from when I was seven years old. I was crying in front of my orange and white Fisher-Price doll house. I couldn’t understand why I felt this void in my chest, why my sister and my parents got along the best. I got tired of playing make-believe. I put all my hope into a dollhouse that I wished would come to life. With the trope of a perfect family, where love was more than just implied. Where my presence wasn’t a burden, where the sound of an opening garage door didn’t make me nervous. And I put all my hope in a Cinderella song, where a wish is more powerful than a knight. So through smoke surrounded hope, I threw my lifeline of dreams to the sky, and the summer breeze let them coast to a place where teardrops make starlights. I prayed that the sky would read the salt in my tears, my hope despite my fear, and my deep longing to be anywhere but here. And I ached and I ached until I put all my hope in a God I didn’t know. I begged him to read the glaze in my eyes, and clutched the hole where love should reside
before I asked him why I felt so confined. Shouldn’t a home feel safe inside? He gave me solace, in the quiet of night, and said my house lacked a home, a room for my soul.

So I’ve dreamed of growing old since I was seven. Dreamed of a place, so peaceful it could be heaven, where my feet could run and jump and dance, without playing a weighty game of chance. My smile would be a blooming bouquet and in the breeze, my fears would drift away. But at the end of the day, I was seven. I was crying along in my room in front of my orange and white Fisher-Price doll house, begging whoever in the universe was listening to grow me up. I begged them to have mercy on my young and tired eyes, begged them to let me leave this house of lies.

So since then, I’ve longed for the day when I can finally pack up and say,

“I’m going to find my home, the place where I can be me, and I can be known.”