Daffodils

Spring always has the connotation of new beginnings, and the sickeningly feeling that you should stop feeling sorry for yourself as you once did during those lonely winter nights… whether you like it or not. They tell you to be happy and productive “‘cause the sun is out” and “the flowers are a-blooming” and that “nature is waking up, you should be happy”, again and again and again. Once you get bombarded enough that you are insecure enough to listen, you start doing those things. 

You deep clean your apartment even though you found nothing wrong with it before. You go to town on that sucker, plucking and pruning and snipping until you are putting tchotchkes and family heirlooms and pieces of your personality that used to comfortingly clutter your apartment into a box labeled “Give Away” in sloppy Sharpie script because they neither have “a specific place nor purpose”; what’s their use to you? You get up really early in the morning to watch the sun rise. You start doing yoga. You switch out your ritualistic three cups of heavily-sugared black coffee for one cup of herbal tea. You find an old bike at a thrift store and start riding to work everyday. You get a membership at a gym full of people you used to make fun of and think you would never turn into. There, you meet a beautiful woman with long ebony hair while you're working your ass off on the treadmill, trying to outrun your problems; let’s call her Maddie. 

She has on a baggy t-shirt with flowers: daffodils. You take this as a sign from the “magical spring season” and strike up a conversation as people do even though you would never have gone out on a limb like this before. You laugh and giggle and flirt as normal people do, and soon enough, you have a date. That one date at the local coffee shop/bookstore combo run by Pete and his partner David turns into another at a glass-blowing class where you make a vase together: a rickety and warbly vase, but a vase at that. You’re both happy, you and Maddie.

Weeks filled with happy dates later, you find inspiration from her shirt on that fateful spring day filled with the smell of sweaty people and disinfectant and decide to take your girlfriend on a picnic at a wildflower meadow. She loves it, jumping and skipping and frolicking around, a smile plastered on her freckled face. You see a patch of perky yellow daffodils, picking one and handing it to her. You take the next logical step in your relationship and ask her to move in with you (because that's what you're supposed to do). She smiles. Everyone is happy.     

Months pass of this routine and things are… different. You two don’t do anything spontaneous anymore. You never see each other because you’re so wrapped up in your schedules, and when you do see each other, you’re just fighting. Fighting over the fact that you don’t see each other anymore, fighting over the laundry, fighting because it’s so hard to get out of bed in the morning and she doesn’t understand, fighting because she misses the old you (the fake you), fighting because you’re both tired, you’re tired of this routine, you’re tired of this bullshit, you’re tired of acting normal and fine, you’re tired of trying to be happy all the time, you’re tired-

And it quickly dawns on you that the daffodil that you keep replacing is wilting and dying in that rickety glass vase… just like your relationship....

Maddie too withdraws and wilts away, moving in with the coworker she slept with at the holiday party. On the day she packs all of her stuff up and moves away, she stops in the living room. She drops her bags on the rug and makes one final walk-around the apartment, smiling fondly at pictures in frames and pieces of art and knickknacks you collected together. She stops at the kitchen table...  at the dying daffodil in the rickety glass vase. You see her shed a tear, turn away, and stride back over to the living room to pick up her bags. She turns to you, red-eyed, giving you one last smile: the Maddie smile. As she passes by you, she stops, kissing your forehead, and then heads out the door, leaving behind the smell of her jasmine perfume and a headful of broken memories.  

And when she left your life, so too did the daffodil, it’s once happy yellow petals drooping further, hanging its head in grief. The longer you stared at it, the longer you also wished that you could never see a damn daffodil ever again. That you could never feel the warmth and happiness those perky petals possess. That your problems would go away, that the depression thundercloud would just leave, that you could just stop the damn routine-  

     So you do. You cancel the gym membership filled with sweaty people. You leave the rest of your herbal coffee in the office kitchen and start your sugary, caffeine-rich ritual yet again. You start taking the subway to work again. You sleep in, letting the sun kiss your sleeping face… under the blankets. You start going to therapy. You find most of your old tchotchkes and decorations at the thrift store, placing them back into their cluttered formation; you’re content with your nest. You buy a quart of ice cream, find a marathon of your favorite comfort show, and sit on your comfy couch all weekend, doing nothing else: you’re content.

One weekend, you take your drooping daffodil back to that meadow, alone this time. You look around and notice how peaceful it still is. You feel a quick breeze coming on, your curls whipping around your face. You look down at your dead daffodil, turning the squishy stem in your palm. You think back to your spring of self-growth, the mistakes, the choices, the experiences, the grief, the self-doubts… and you let them and your daffodil go, letting the breeze carry them away.