Wilting Blooms

I have a plant sitting on my window sill. It’s been there for about three months, I think, ever since I first picked it out at the grocery. The plant was in one of those seasonal racks looking all bright and cheerful, covered in blooms, and it was so pretty and fresh and natural and I was overwhelmed with the idea that if I brought it home it would make not just my dingy little apartment but maybe even my whole life brighter just by being there. And I thought to myself that all you’d have to do is water it once a week and everything would be fine. So I took it home. It looked strong enough to handle all the expectations I was placing on it and more.

So I introduced it to my kinda crappy apartment. It’s not too bad, I suppose. There's a couch and a loveseat that were second hand from my parents, and the cane chair I found at a thrift store that looks kinda cool if you turn the stained side of the cushion over. The bedroom furniture is the same furniture I had from when I was a kid. None of it is great stuff, but it doesn’t look too bad and most of it is comfortable. There was a little wicker table over by the window, and I put the plant there in its new home.

Honestly, it really did make the place feel better. I’ve lived here for about five years now on my own. After taking a break from college and retreating back home for a few years, I moved in with a roommate who proved to be a little too active socially for my tastes. We had been sort of acquaintance-friends in college and I knew she liked to party, and I thought maybe that was what I needed in my life after two years of living back at home with my parents. Home had turned into a checklist of passive-aggressive comments, helpful suggestions, and newspapers left laying around with ads for available apartments circled that they assumed were in  my price range. I figured a more active social life might shake me out of my slump. See people, go places, hit a few bars, live that wild, carefree life that 20-somethings were supposed to live, according to all the magazine ads and Instagram posts. 

The shared apartment was a disaster from the word go. Nothing worked out. Lydia went out to bars, then Lydia brought people back to the apartment at 11, 12 o’clock at night when I was already dressed for bed and had work the next morning and I got to spend the night trying to suffocate my ears with my pillow. When I’d wake for work the next morning food would be gone, strangers in various states of undress were asleep on the couch, and bottles laying around everywhere. I’d think to myself, this lifestyle is a far cry from Insta, and head off to the call center. 

And it’s not that Lydia was selfish or thoughtless or anything, she was always offering to drag me out somewhere full of loud music and people with too many problems and not enough brain cells. She never seemed to be aware that I wasn’t ever really having a good time with her or the people she met. And that is something I’ve had to accept about myself. She could meet two dozen new people a night and love it, I don’t ever seem to like any of the new people I meet. At least, not in any of those places.

After another two years I finally realized that having fun was not really part of my life plan. I managed to scrape together enough cash to afford most of the deposit (with a small parental contribution) and get a place of my own, without a roommate. After the drama-filled old apartment, what was originally a relief turned into tedium in just a few short months. I had bought a couple of pictures to hang on the wall, but I only ever got around to hanging just one of them–it’s a Van Gogh print, I think–but I didn’t see too much need to make the place colorful. During the daylight hours I am always at work, and once I’m home everything is illuminated in the murky glow of Netflix. 

But, this flowering plant is going to turn all that around, right? I mean, I know just having a flower in the apartment isn’t going to turn anything around. In fact, I’m running a risk of a huge guilt trip by buying some beautiful living thing and possibly turning it into murdered garbage.

But, I bought it and set it on a little table by the window and let it have sunlight and watered it right away. The water leaked out of the bottom of the pot and ran off the table and onto the floor, so I had to clean that up and sacrifice a never-used saucer from my Walmart set of four place settings to catch any future drips and I finally got to set back and admire it. 

I’m hoping this will change things, I guess, maybe more fresh oxygen in the apartment, or giving off a positive, living vibe that will inspire me, or something like that. I look at it and feel a little happier, so it’s doing something. And maybe it’ll be the liftoff I need to change some things, and maybe be in less of a rut or whatever I’m feeling anymore. And maybe it’s that I’m not even feeling that much, to be honest. I think about going back to school, I think about the latest thing my mother said, things I should have said to Lydia, the same old arguments and discussions playing out in my head over and over again. I feel tired just for rehashing them. Something growing and thriving and blooming should make me feel at least a little better.

And for a while it worked. I really did find myself watching my potted pet, keeping it watered and sitting and watching its beautiful red blooms. 

But then the blooms started wilting. I tried more water, less water, more and less light, but nothing did any good. Even the leaves started to get brown around the edges. I felt like I was on the edge of failure, and wondered if somehow my negative vibes overwhelmed this little plant and it was getting crushed. I knew there was a lady down the hall–an older lady–and she had plants. All old ladies know about plants, right? It’s like they hit a certain age and they understand everything about growing things. I hadn’t ever done more than say “hi” in passing, but I was desperate enough to save my plant that I went down and timidly knocked on her door.

She was friendly enough, and had to ask me for my name because in my little rehearsed spiel about why I was knocking on her door I forgot to include my name. But she was nice, and seemed in good humor that I was asking her about plant care. She invited me into her apartment, which was painted a light yellow and glowed with golden light. The thriving plants here and there made me think I had come to the right place. 

She had me set it down on the counter. She looked it over for just a moment from behind the electric blue frames of her oversized glasses and immediately looked back at me with a large smile. “Well, honey,” she said, you have to cut the blooms off when they start to turn brown. Once you cut the old blooms off, the plant can use all its sunlight and water to make new blooms.”

I genuinely hadn’t heard of this and felt stupid. “You mean the blooms that are on there can’t be saved?”

“No, dear,” she chuckled through her bright red lipstick, “Once the blooms open, they’ve had their day. They bloom for a little while, and then they pass. If you try to leave them on they’ll sap all the life out of the plant and eventually the plant itself dies. Only by letting go of the old blooms, no matter how pretty they were, can new blooms form and grow.” She gently lifted the wilting flowers. “These old ones are sucking the life out of this plant. You’ve got to cut them off if it's going to have any chance of survival.”

I made some obligatory small talk so it didn’t seem like I was running out right away, but I did politely refuse a glass of wine. I made my way back to my apartment and set the plant back on its table and studied its faded, soggy blooms. I wasn’t completely sure the old lady down the hall was right, but it was time to try. 

Now I just need to buy some scissors.