12 April 2021 – Anais Nin wrote: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Well, here I am. Amazingly, one can get to a point in life where you finally realize that you have been holding on too tightly and remaining too small.

For much of my life, I have tried to find my thing. I have never been successful at it. As a child, I tried new things, ballet, cheerleading, track, but I never stuck with it because I wasn’t good at it, and I didn’t enjoy it. I tried band, mechanical drawing, flag corps, piano, foreign language, same thing. Now I was always good at school, and I was even the teacher’s pet most of the time because I did my work and kept my mouth shut, and didn’t cause any issues. But as time went on, I realized I was never going to be great at school. I was much better than average, but I was nowhere close to being at the top. It seemed that I would never blossom.

I was always the type of person who could do most things well but never one thing great. Fortunately, that was usually enough to get by. Most people in my life thought I was better at things than I really am. I can fake anything long enough to figure it out, and I work harder than the average person. Persistence usually saves me. Reading this will be the first time some people realize that I am not really as smart as they thought I was; I am just capable. I’ve always been afraid that someone would figure it out and my cover would be blown. I have lived with the stress of someone finding out the truth for so long that just writing these words has lifted a huge weight. So, there it is; I am an average person who fakes it until she can figure it out and works harder to cover her tracks.

So what does this have to do with the Anais Nin quote and being ready to blossom? I have spent my whole life pretending to be more than I am to cover up the fact that I am perfectly imperfect, just the way I am. I have held so tightly to my “secret” that I have remained a small bud. One of those buds on a rose bush looks like it will be beautiful, but it never actually blossoms. It opens just a little at the top, and then it stops. The bud stays like that and refuses to open up until it just dies. The loss is doubled. We don’t get to see the beautiful rose because it stays hidden, and the rose never gets the chance to show off its beauty because it is held so tight. What’s the point in doing this? Once we blossom, everyone wins. Our surroundings get to experience our beauty, and we get to blossom.

What took me so long to get to this point, and why did it take a quote I saw in a random book to wake me up to the fact that I need to blossom? Life continues to surprise me. I guess it is time to let go, get some sunshine, stay well hydrated and eat right so that I can bloom wherever I want, and however I want. I wonder what color I will be? (I think I know).