Mood Bracelet

My bestfriend gave me a mood bracelet. It has a bright yellow, rubber strap and a tiny slipper attached to it. The slipper changes color, depending on my mood. The instruction is simple enough. Touch the slipper against your skin and wait for the color to change. Blue for happy. Light blue for chill. Green for active. Orange for unsettled. Violet for romantic. Black for stressed out.

Well, being the logical, rational creatures that we were, we figured out that it's not our mood, but the temperature, that causes the slipper to change color. I think that was obvious enough from the very beginning. But that little piece of knowledge would take the beauty out of the bracelet. So I tell my rational self to shut up and just make believe that it does work.

I love to watch the colors shift and change and blend. Sometimes I'd plunge my hand on a pail of water, or hold it against the air conditioner, just to see the transformation. It gives me a childish sense of pleasure and wonder.

The slipper is seldom just one color. Sometimes it's blue with a tinge of violet, or orange with black edges, or a blend of greenish blue. Like our emotions. We are seldom purely happy. Or purely sad. Purely calm. Purely stressed. Purely angry. At any one point in time, we are a mixture of emotions, some bubbling just above our surface, others hidden way beyond the depths of our souls. If we could only light up depending on our mood, the rainbows would pale in comparison.

When my childlike self goes back to her quiet corner at the back of my head, and the rational me steps out in its place, I find myself wishing the mood bracelet was real. I wish it really could tell me how I feel. Because more often than not, it's all too confusing. It's just so hard to tell.

What am I feeling right now? I don't know. My bracelet says blue.

<3