“Congrats,” they tell her, and she smiles because she really is happy.

But she’s also so many other things.

She’s a rainbow of feelings.

She’s red with fear,

green with joy,

orange with excitement,

and blue with tears.

She’s wanted this for so long.

She never really knew where she wanted to be, but she knew she wanted to be there…wherever there is.

And now she can be.

They sent her a letter and told her they wanted her just as much as she wanted them,

if not more.

She cried at the words, happy tears.

Tears filled with a rainbow of feelings.

“Now what?” She thinks to herself.

“Now we smile and say ‘thank you.’

We tell people like we know that this is who we are that this is the place we are meant to be.

We laugh at the fact that everyone around us thinks they know best.

We chuckle when people make definitives they definitely know nothing about.

And we’re excited.

But we’re also terrified.

We are filled with a rainbow of feelings.”

She goes to her room that night and gets in the shower.

She stands there alone, naked, and she feels herself beam.

She’s so ecstatic.

In moments, that beam turns to a sob.

A sob holding a waterfalled rainbow of feelings.

She wants to leave but she’s scared.

She loves what she has been given, but she loves the comfort of her now.

She knows she’ll love it but she also knows it will be hard.

She knows it will all be new

but she wants it so bad.

She wants it and she knows everyone wants it for her as well.

But how can she not feel

a little blue,

a little green,

a little orange,

and a little red?

Her tears make the colors look like water as they fall down her face.

They hit the floor of the shower and create a rainbow.

She watches as the walls drip with her rainbow of feelings.

These are not feelings she has had before.

Such excitement yet such fear.

She has gone away and has come back and been just fine.

But it wasn’t her future.

It wasn’t her life for the next who knows how long.

It is so uncertain yet so certain.

It is so amazing yet so scary.

And despite it all, she beams through the tears,

her watercolor paints of emotions streaming down her cheeks

as she radiates and glows.

“This I swear,”

she says aloud to no one but herself,

“will be amazing.”