Learning to Bloom

I went to garden shops this morning with my housemate. I am not really a flower or plant person myself. I don't really take care of them very well and I worry about them constantly. I don't like taking care of gardens because it requires getting dirty, which is something else that I do not like.

My housemate loves plants. All of the plants have recently come into the apartment from the balcony, which makes the apartment look a lot more alive than it once did. The only problem that my housemate has with one of the plants is that not blooming. She feels ripped off because her parents have all the plants that are flowering.

It is interesting that flowers are entering so much more into my life at this point. I think this may be because of a friend's blog. Flowers are now becoming a larger part of his life too. The last blog that focused on flowers was about the garden of our community.

It's never until I get to home to the community that I realize I haven't been blooming. When I am at school, I feel as though I am the hibiscus in the apartment. I'm getting enough water and enough light, but I am not blooming.

When I get to the community, I get more than enough water, more than enough light and some extra nutrients that allow me to bloom. I feel like the rare flower that only appears for four months out of the year. I bloom when I am surrounded by the other rare flowers that cannot be taken out of their environment.

Now that I am back at school, I still have a little bit of the bloom left in my life, but not too much. Sugar and caffeine seem to be what keeps the most bloom in life for me. That, and long phone calls to back home seem to help.

Learning to bloom is something that is harder than it seems. For many years of my life, I have turned so far inward that there is no way anyone else could see the bloom. Shoulders hunched over and a fear to open my mouth in front of anyone were the mark of my life. Now they are not. I have learned to stand up straight and to open my mouth because I have an opinion that counts.

I may not always want to bloom and some times I feel as though I am not ready to, but I can. I know I can because I am not a boring plant that someone walks all over. I am a rare flower.