Bud.

Do you read things you wrote in the past (like you come across old email messages or your journal...), and realize you haven't changed, and your life hasn't changed, and everything just ended up the same?  Maybe you have been in the same type of relationship over and over again, but with different men.  You keep picking the same kind of guy, right?  And years go by, and you're alone again, and wondering how and why?

How and why?

You know how and why.  You know, because you can feel it.  You feel it inside you.  You realize you haven't changed, and maybe that was where it was all supposed to happen.  It depended on you, not the people around you, or people in your life; and you are the same, unchanged, even if something drastic has added a blip to your flatline.  

My goodness, how often have I written about moving in circles and about change just on this blog, yet where am I?  Have I changed my tone or subjects?  Have you seen personal growth in the writer?  No.  

People leave my life, but I let them.  I tuck inside myself, close up tight, and hide away when I'm scared.  And I'm most scared when I know I have changed, yet I'm in the same place, and I'm not fitting in anymore.  But I just try to fit in and go back to how I was before, instead of changing anything else around me.  I don't move forward in life with my personal growth or development (good or bad).  I stand still and hold onto anything that is stationary and bolted to the floor.  "I'm supposed to be here, so don't move."  

And although I'm the one responsible for my own life, but it is impossible to not say that people can anchor you in place or hold you where you are, instead of helping you live and grow.

Stay a bud, I'll wrap around you and hold your petals in.  Becoming a flower is scary.  And you won't be a bud anymore, ever. Ever.  You'll be a flower.  You'll be a different thing.  Do you know how to be that thing?  Do you know how to stop being a bud?  Isn't being a bud just fine?  What is wrong with being a freaking bud?  

Don't you dare try to bloom.  It's not worth it.  It's not that great.  

Even if your petals have been pried or stroked open, and it felt good, you realize that you can't open up, fully, unless you keep having sun and water.  You need it.  If the sun disappears, you can't blossom.  If you don't have water, you shrivel and dry up.  So if people leave, people who were helping open you up, and it's your fault, then you are left without sunshine.  You are in the dark.

It's funny that when my sister and I chose our "matching" tattoos, I chose to leave out the bud, and only have the two flowers in the image we selected.  She wanted the bud, the stem... I just wanted the flowers...