A Freak Flower

I saw this today morning as I stepped out into our garden: a lone pink flower in middle of yellow blossoms. And, I was moved to tears. Now you could blame it on my hormones or mood swings or whatever contemporary term you choose to call the emotion I felt. But, at that moment, I really wanted to reach out to the tiny flower and say “I feel you”.

The other week, someone hurt me a lot by his words, perhaps unintentionally, and maybe I felt so much worse afterwards because I was dealing with an issue on my own and his words added to my agony. Suddenly, I was the freak flower in middle of yellow blossoms who stuck together. And, I did not speak up for myself. On the other hand, I just hoped one of the yellow blossoms would speak up for me, but why should I expect that when all I did was walking away? I did walk away, but I never really let it go. I mulled over it a lot and realised why no one spoke up- because no one wants to be the freak flower, all everyone wants is to just fit in somehow.

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And a while back, one of my very good friends saw me dealing with a personal crisis with poise and told me “I am proud of you; you have become so matured, I never expected you would go through all this the way you did”. I smiled at her. Perhaps, I was reassured by what she said. Recently, a cousin who had not seen me up close for a couple of years, spent some time with me, and told “you changed a lot, you have become so mature”. I told her “may be it is that I am growing old” and gave her the same smile. Both these times I felt a weight was lifting off my chest, I mean it was a reassurance that I was probably finally fitting in-a distant promise that I can be one of the yellow blossoms. But, somewhere in the back of my mind it really terribly bothers me if I will ever be a yellow bloom or am I just a freak flower trying to hide under a canopy of leaves?

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Few days back I had an interesting conversation with a (confused) friend of mine and I don’t remember exactly what we talked, but I remember one of us (don’t know who) saying at the end, that character never changes; only behaviour does. How very true.

At the end of the day whatever we say and do, we cannot run away from what we really are. We all have a freak flower in us, the one we try to hide; the one we try to ignore and even suppress. But, how much ever we try; it just comes back to us- like a boomerang. I guess, whenever we feel like we don’t fit in, we should tell ourselves “It is ok. I am a freak flower and a beautiful one at that”. And, things will be a lot easier. I am trying to do that now, not that I am really good at it, but somehow this little flower I saw today makes me feel it is fine at times to look at the world through rose-coloured glasses.

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