Too Much Sun for a Sunflower.
Hello everyone! Fair warning beforehand.
This is like a cheap TED talk. (For clarification I love TED talks.) I just had it pop into my head and I needed to write it.
I am a normal person. A little funny, loud and quiet, a stranger on the street that people see and pass by without realizing the thoughts of flowers and sunshine in my head most of the time. I am a happy person or at least I was. I was dumped by someone I thought I loved and who I thought loved me. But I went to surprise him at his job and found him sharing lunch with his ex-fiancé. When he came to pick me up for our date that night, I confronted him. Instead of showing any sense of kindness and explaining himself he said: "I'm glad you know it's over then." Before he left. Leaving me to have a breakdown so intense that when my roommates got home 2 hours later, they flipped and took me to the ER because I was passed out on the floor. It took me two weeks to get back to almost normal. It hurt so badly to have to go through the gifts he gave me that month. The teddy bear, the pictures, the jewelry. I cried harder with every item that went in the box, my roommates felt safe enough to come in and try to help me, they grabbed the box from my hands and replaced it with a lighter. Burn it. All of it they told me. An I broke again. How could I even think of betraying him like he betrayed me? But out of all the things that hurt me. I think what hurt the most was I was sitting in the park with some friends having a picnic and he walked past with his new girl. One of them that went from a mutual friend to only mine said hello and when he replied he looked at all of us and his eyes brushed over me like I didn't exist. And all I could think was "How dare you? How dare you be okay? I can't look at those memories without wanting to cry and I always do because the memories are all I have left. You made me so dependent on you and your sense of humor to get through the day that I didn't laugh for almost a month after we broke up. When he walked away, he called her darling in that beautiful tone and my friends looked at my shock and hurt and knew that I might never recover. I was his darling. I was his sunflower. But I stood there too long and my leaves dried up and my petals fell off. He cut me down to the dirt and I couldn't see the sun anymore. But my roots are strong even though they were damaged. And they started growing again. I started on the inside deep down and made sure my roots got extra care. Every friend I have is a leaf, every smile and laugh another inch stretching toward the sky. I don't have any petals yet but I'm getting there and this time I'm happy enough to be both the sun and the sunflower. The cause and effect of my own happiness. That was the end of my story. Now how many of you related to it? A few? A lot?
Well, what if I told you that it's a lie? I have never had a boyfriend, I live at home currently and I actually don't really like teddy bears. ( I prefer otters.) some of you saw the ending coming, others might not have but that is what life is. It is unpredictable nonsense and I will love every second of it. Right now a baby is being born that will become the future president, an astronaut, a writer, and out of all three I find the writer to be the most impressive. Yes you can lead a country to greatness or ruin or you can walk on the moon but can you create a world out of thin air? Can you create mythology and history that brings protagonists to their knees? Can you make me laugh and cry and feel for these characters like I've known them my entire life? To me the people with the ability to create will always be the most powerful whether they are painting, writing, sketching, sewing, or directing. Any form of creation is powerful and monumentous and I am in awe of people with the ability. They are all sunflowers stretching as far as they can. The sun is everything they hope and dream and just a little bit gives them direction and purpose. Be a sunflower and find your sun. but make sure you take a break from it sometimes. Drink some water and chow down some nutrients and be the strongest sunflower you can be.