[trigger warning: suicide]

< mike >“I give up . . .”

It was an apology for his sadness. It was a eulogy for himself.

“not because i am weak, but because i am sick.”

Mike was smiling in his profile picture
and drove head on into an orange Kentworth logging truck that same night.

< img src=basket of oranges>
There is no blue without orange, Van Gogh once wrote.

He was thinking about color contrast theory.
Too many similar shades and the painting becomes a harmony of greys.
Colors, like everything else, are informed by their opposites.

There is no 3366FF without FF9933.

Much like color contrast, mental health becomes an unforgettable part of a Van Gogh painting.
A vibrating and contrasting color palette is what brought life to his still lifes,
though it is a life completely unhinged from reality.

Imagine instead that Van Gogh’s color theory describes a philosophy of manic depression.

What nice blue skies, what brightened oranges,
and he shot himself in the heart behind a barn.
How have the colors changed?< /img>

Mike is still smiling in his profile picture today.

i am sick :-­)

look at the orange truck look at the orange truck
now look at the blue sky
< /mike>