THE PURPLE ROOM

     I just redid one of the rooms in my house.  I suppose you would call it a family room but we called it the red room since the carpet was red.  That carpet was 29 years old and was overdue for being replaced but I loved that carpet.  About a dozen years ago I redid that room but the carpet stayed.  It is a large room and my new carpet that I just installed cost $1,500 so that played a big factor in why it took me so long to replace it but the other reason is, it is now very hard to find red carpet.  When I say red, I mean fire engine red!  Even when I got it installed in 1987 it was a color that needed to be special ordered.
     One would think that if I am a kind of person who can jump right in with a red carpet, I would be a person who is not afraid of bright colors.  Sometimes there is moment in a person's life where they realize that they have lived trying to make people happy and they have lost their true selves.  I had that epiphany a few years ago.  That red carpet was the one bright spot in my home but I really was just copying the red carpet in my mother in laws family room.  That made it acceptable.  Later on before my son was born I didn't find out if he was a boy or girl ahead of time so I did have a yellow room for him.  It was a wonderful bright yellow but I always knew that I was going against what my in laws thought was acceptable.  I had been decorating my house with muted colors for years and I got more and more nervous about branching out.
     As my two girls got older they wanted to have a say in what colors we would use.  We have a summer home and it needed to have the walls painted and they wanted their room to be orange...bright orange.  I complied because after all, it was their room and I should let them have a say.  They think that I am unhappy with the orange but in reality I am thrilled with it.  I probably wouldn't pick orange but it does look good to me and more importantly they have not been influenced by outside opinions!  Maybe I am living vicariously through them.
     It is not a good feeling to know that I allowed myself to worry so much about pleasing other people.  It is hard to realize that in the past I have decorated my house to try to get people to like me but that is exactly what I did.  It was a slow process because first, many years ago, I took down a lot of decorations that were considered "arts and crafts."  If you walk into my in laws houses that is what you will see and that is what I did in order to fit in.  When I realized that I didn't really like it and it was becoming old fashioned, I got rid of it all.  For many years I had hardly anything on the walls until my kids came home with artwork and I hung that up.
     What was really brewing in my mind was that epiphany that I needed to be myself.  It probably seems silly to other people but it is exceedingly difficult to override that sense of being judged.  For other reasons, I have chosen to stop having a relationship with my in laws.  I guess this issue is symbolic of my reasons.  I tried to be acceptable by changing myself but it never worked.  Once I gave up trying to please them, it has been hard to figure out who I am.  It makes me more sensitive to other people's judgement as well.  For me that is a lot to overcome.
     My favorite color is purple so it made sense to paint the room purple.  In my mind it would be a glaring color that no one would like but me.  It seems rather ridiculous now to have worried about that but it was important to me to overcome those feelings and I did it!  It really is just a lavender that is peaceful seeming.  I love my purple room, not only because it is my favorite color but also because people don't paint their family rooms purple...but I DO!