The prettiest flowers are gone first. They’re whisked away by a child’s curious hand and wrapped together with all the other pretty flowers in a bundle of flashing colors. Then the rest of the flowers are forgotten, stepped on on the way out to further the damage. 

I think a field of flowers is a metaphor for how life works out. All the pretty and talented people are picked up by fate and showered with money and opportunities and the normal ones are stuck there watching, doing everything they can to be noticed.

Once the pretty flowers are picked -- once they’re chosen -- they just die. The only purpose they have in that field is to stand out, until they do and they’re ripped up from their little community and thrown into the hands of a person who just thought they were prettier than the rest. 

If you really think about it, we’re exactly the same way. Once you’re rich and pretty, you’re free. You don’t need to work or worry about supporting your family, because you have everything you need. 

We don’t die, we become freed. Maybe flowers are freed once they’re picked, but I guess we’ll never know. People care about the perspectives of pretty flowers almost less than they care about the perspectives of ugly people. 

You can’t fix an ugly flower, but you can fix broken people with enough appointments and medications. You can fix your personality by changing it. 

You can hide marks, scratches and slits with long sleeves and a milky way of excuses. 

You can fix your life by throwing it away like the food you couldn’t force down at lunch. 

Flowers just live with it. Flowers continue to grow, only wilting every once in a while. We fall apart.

It’s selfish to wish I could be like a flower. I have everything in front of me, but what do you do when you’ve been falling apart for years and the sun can’t pick you back up again? When you’re stuck in the hazy fog of wanting to disappear forever but feeling too conflicted, what do you do?

Giving up at a young age is seen as failure. Being sure isn’t allowed because you’re just a young girl who’s influenced too much by social media, right? You’re just the girl who is surrounded by words of attack by her peers and can only fight back with pen and paper. You’re the one who’s in too much drama and who’s grades aren’t as good as they could be because you’re a daydreamer and not a listener. You’re someone who’s a pleasure to have in class but all you want to do is go home. You’re someone who is trying too hard to be depressed when all you want to do is keep your mouth shut. You’re not a pretty flower, you’re a pathetic one. 

Flowers can’t change their identity. A sunflower can’t become a rose, a tulip can’t become a sunflower, but a person can become someone new. Alterations and diets and artificial colors hide who you really are. Who you really don’t want to be. 

Maybe one day, we’ll all accept our natural roots and grow from them. Until then, the pretty flowers will keep being picked.