When I was in my late twenties and P.J. and I had just fallen in love and the world got rearranged, I painted the living room of my small house as a first step toward getting it ready to go on the market. Dark, blood-red walls were transformed with light brown paint that I was delighted to see turned out to be the exact shade of a cup of hot chocolate, made from a mix. Not too yellow, not too red. I didn’t keep the paint chip and I could kick myself for that, because I may never be able to repeat those results.

That shade of soft, light brown, swirling hot chocolate, is what color the peace has been, yesterday and today, as the hypomania has subsided and I’ve drifted down as slowly as a light autumn leaf on the gentlest of winds. I can trust myself again to have normal relationship with others and make decisions.

And if I think back, it’s always been this color when it has come, the peace of calming down. My peace is Swiss-Miss, soft, milky brown.

Through the synaesthesia, I’ve had a good deal of music and some smells take on color, but rarely an emotion. The color of my peace on this morning, however, is unmistakable.

A mug doesn’t stay warm in the winter of bipolar disorder, so I am sipping and savoring while holding this cup of peace in comforted, becalmed, thankful woolen mitten hands.