Growing Pains

I am forever apologetic for breaking you, especially so young. I planted fear within your soul and allowed it to grow in an abundance until you felt it all over. As you grew, you began to feel the thick stems create a home inside of you. Sadness bloomed like roses and its thorns were a constant burden. Things changed right before your eyes; money, marriages, family, friendships, yet you were in no place to prevent the new. Despite the troubles weighing on your heart, you felt a constant emptiness that no possible growth would fill. A cold numbness that would make healing nearly impossible. Nevertheless, we tried. Yes, we; I am yet to learn my lesson. Happiness came in the form of a brown eyed dream with dirty blonde hair long enough to tuck behind his ears. He was broken too and you knew it, but you were too naive to know better. He was beautiful. He drew you in with his words, he was a poet in the way he spoke. Your first love is going to ruin you more than anything ever has; It will change you, mature you, bring you to tears, make you lose yourself in the worst of ways. A familiar face turns to a stranger; a dream in the hands of a hopeless dreamer.

Everything is temporary, whether you are able to grasp that or not. The universe we live in holds the power to change your life for better or for worse. Which path it decides is unknown to the majority of us. You lived many of your years in fear of the unknown. You resorted to a life of

prayer and devotion to God, or whoever your deity may have been. Every prayer was different from the previous, ranging from unreasonable demands to simply putting your thoughts out into the universe. You were not meant for this, in fact it did nothing but confuse you. You prayed for each of your thorns, unknowingly giving them the chance to multiply along the stem causing your very own foundation to crumble beneath you little by little. Lucky for you, we do not always stay broken forever.

Picking up the pieces will take time. It will hurt you and humble you meanwhile also putting you in the right direction towards growth and self acceptance. As you grow, you begin to recognize the stranger you trapped in the mirror. She has curly brown hair down to her shoulders, beautiful brown eyes that turned the color of a mandarin sunset when the sunlight hit just right, glowing honey skin that was baby smooth. You prayed to fall in love with the pretty honey coated dream that you met in the mirror. At night she cried for you. She ran her finger tips along your collar bones, getting to know every bump and groove there was, and trust me there were many. He words were like candy, sweet with the pronunciation of  each letter. You want to love her; It is a goal you would do anything to meet. I guess I never gave you the proper amount of time that one would take to fall in love with themselves in and out. I robbed you of your inner peace and disrupted any type of passion you may have possessed. I would do anything to go back and push you to your limits, reinventing you as a whole.

Growth will be painful. Similar to flowers in the winter, you longed for the nearing spring in hopes of change. The transition between the seasons seemed like an eternity. You watched others around you sprout and become beautiful while you still had no way of knowing what you would sprout into. Your time came in the span of just a few months. You waited with an eager heart and impatient mind, sometimes even praying to whoever you believed was up there. The day you met the curly brown haired girl in the mirror was confusing, yet a match made in heaven. You loved her, but you would never admit it. You greeted her with a smile and she gave one back for the first time. Welcome to the honey coated dream. Sorry to break it to you, but you will wake up sooner or later. Enjoy the rest while it lasts.

As I write to you today, I feel nothing but an overwhelming amount of joy and pride. Although you never bloomed into the rose that I spent my days picturing, I planted a whole field within you, this time without an overwhelming fear of what you don’t know. Sooner or later you will be excited for the unknown. You’ll crave the exposure to all things new and different. You will meet new people, fall in love, get your heartbroken, be judged, lied to, and you will lose yourself a couple of times along the way. Your roses are still sprouting. Trust me, I feel them blossoming within me. You have time.