Forever New in Beautiful Blue

This is me in blue.

“Blue” never makes me feel “down”. I love colours and rarely wear all black.

Bright cheery radiant coloured clothing makes me feel new and beautiful!

This is my favourite dress, which I bought from a retail store called “Forever New.”

It’s Australian size 6 or EU 34 or USA 2 in 97% polyester and 3% elastane.

The polyester lining is gorgeously silky and is wonderful to feel on my skin, and this blue number has an 11-inch side zip, so I don’t need help with a zipper at the back.

It has a pleated skirt and falls just below my knees. The glorious colour of this dress and its clean lines makes me feel empowered, calm and queenly.

Being small with a petite frame, one day I popped into Forever New, which has beautiful clothes for small adults.

As soon as I saw this dress, I knew it was “me”.

I teamed it with a large beaded necklace with a “Frozen” theme, featuring Anna and Elsa, and a “Frozen” theme bracelet to match because this favourite dress evokes images of the sea and of frozen worlds.

This dress is more special to me because at the time the photo was taken, November 2018, I was suffering from an illness, that I wasn’t aware of.

I wore this dress to work back then, and as my colleagues and I were going to a meeting, I suddenly felt dizzy and had to lean against a wall for support.

My friend grabbed a chair for me and after sitting for a few minutes I was okay.

Because I was on warfarin, which stops blood clotting, and I had slow internal bleeding, I felt dizzy on and off; but it wasn’t bad enough for me to go to the doctor’s office until I collapsed on the first Thursday of the New Year 2019.

I was rushed to the hospital, and spent a horrific 5 days in there, being treated for a stomach ulcer and getting my INR, a measurement of the effectiveness of warfarin, back on target.

I had 2 IV drips put in, one for antacid and the other for heparin, a low molecular weight replacement for warfarin. Every time I wanted to go to the toilet, I had to push a mobile stand that was taller than me, with 2 IV drips attached to it, then disentangle the two cables when I got back to my bed.

I didn’t mind untangling the cables as it gave me something to do, along with watching television that I paid for, and I was used to hospital routine, having been admitted in October 2014 for open-heart surgery to replace my aortic valve with a mechanical valve.

I tried to have a shower but the IV needles came out, and the one in my left arm had to be shifted to the wrist.

On the third night, I was just about to fall into a deep sleep when the Nurse told me that I had to have a third drip put in, for potassium.

She placed an ice pack on my arm because the viscosity of the potassium going in for two hours hurt my arm as though it was being squashed in a vice.

The noise at the hospital was a traumatic experience, with people setting off buzzer alarms every few minutes on my 3rd and 4th nights. When I got home and went to bed, it took three hours before all the trauma left my energy field and I could sleep.

The meaning of the “blues” in terms of feeling alone and down or depressed, because of “blue” being associated with tears, could describe my whole life.

From when I was born with a heart murmur to being taken from my mother in Malaya, when I was a baby and brought to Australia, and inter-country adopted, where I was neglected and abused in more ways than one, to today when I am 55 and have only just learned to love myself, I could say that I have had the “blues.”

But each day when I put on my brightly coloured clothes, I remind myself that Life is what we make of it.

Whenever I wear my beautiful blue dress, I remember to look in the mirror and to make sure that the girl looking at me has rosy cheeks and is not too pale.

My favourite blue dress is the perfect counter-foil to my healthy visible physical self, and this counts toward why I love it.

And the following is true, as it is true of a mind that sees beyond our troubles to the patterns that connect us all and keeps us going and loving.

“Blue Skies, nothing but blue skies.”

While wearing my beautiful sky-blue dress, there is nothing but blue skies.

This story is in response to Publishous’ “Favorite Piece of Clothing writing prompt.”