Life is Like a Flower (Depression)

I wrote this a very long time ago; July 14, 2007. This was about a month and a half before I was discharged from the Navy, and I believe this is when my depression really started to come out. This is also five years before I got on medication; I don't feel this way anymore, and it just goes to show how extremely different your mind thinks when it is depressed and when it is back to normal.


A long time ago, someone told me that life was like a flower. I always pictured myself as one of the garden flowers form Alice in Wonderland. I didn't know what they meant--I just thought it was a fun little world to imagine being in. But now I'm finding out, life really is like a flower. Maybe a nuclear submarine is a weird place to discover the similarities, but it's so much more than that now.

I can just picture a cute, purple flower--the kind little kids first learn to draw. It's alive, but it needs sunlight, water, and love to keep it healthy. Sunlight I see as happiness. Staying positive. Motivated. Water I see as sadness, stress, and the general "down side" to life. It seems horrible, but a little bad shows you that you really need to appreciate the sun, the good times, and to love what you have while it's here in the little time life gives you. Love... that one should be obvious. It's the support you need from family and friends that keep you going, that give you a reason to wake up each morning, and to pray for each night.

If I were that flower, I have my love. My family, my husband, and all my friends and co-workers that help me when I need it most. But I feel as if it started raining and never stopped. All I want is a little sunlight... I almost don't remember what it's like. I can see the other flowers, bathing in sunlight, bright as can be. And here I am, drowning. I don't even feel like a flower anymore... I feel like a weed. No one in their right mind wants an annoying, ugly weed in their garden. I want to be a flower again--I want the sunlight again. By the time the rain lets up, the sun will have set and I will be nothing but a wilting weed, old and forgotten by everyone but the bugs, all alone in the dark.