On Valentine’s day he gave me a beautiful red cactus in a blue pot and a painting of my favorite flower. I was beyond elated! He’s not really the romantic type per se so I was fully expecting to just get my favorite chocolate bar. And even if it was that I would’ve loved it because it really doesn’t take much to please me. Just because you know the chocolate bar I like was enough to soothe me. But this! It far exceeded what I expected or imagined. Everything about it was a representation of me. My favorite color, my favorite flower, my love of plants and the whole aesthetic…it was all so me. The very next day…we broke up.
For a while that plant stayed red. A storm had passed and blew it out of the window and it leaned in the pot a little bit, but it still stood. I watered it one day and found that ants or some pests had dug through the soil and attacked the roots, but it still stood. It stayed red for a long time. Despite that the roots were gone, I would occasionally water it and wet the soil. It never grew. But it was red for a long time. Over time…a long time…it started losing its color. But it was still red. Yesterday I saw it in the window (as if I hadn’t been noticing and watching) and the color is very nearly gone.
It’s been nearly two years and my heart hurts as if we broke up just yesterday. And I look at that cactus in the window and I thought for the first time, “what if that’s what our love is like now?”. Did it lose its color after I refused to accept your decision, or after I tried to make you take me back, or after all the arguments I started or after I gave you the instructions to follow in case of my death? If that cactus is like our love, is the only reason it has any hue because I’m holding it together? Or is it the other way around? Am I the one dying?…killing it while you’re doing your best to retain the shade?
The cactus you gave me is dying. It’s losing its color. I am too.
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