Day Ninety-Five: Undated Sketchbook Musings

I don't have much for the next couple of days.  Just some quick entries from 2021.  So I'm going to go with some more interesting, but undated stuff.

Is love rooted in reality or is it the stuff of dreams?  My love didn't just grow up and reach for the sky, it rooted me deep into the reality of life and gave me strength to truly grow.  I tried to prune my love for him, cut parts of it off and make it nice and neat.  But damn if it didn't just keep growing and where I tried to cut back and shape it's growth it went extra wild and shouted "set me free".  He tells me he'll be happy if I uproot it and plant it in someone else's yard, but I know that it would die.  Some plants flourish where they are because that's where they were meant to be.  There are plenty out there who will bloom and grow just anywhere you put them but my existence has taught me that sometimes there are things which only grow under special conditions.  Not anyone can just grow any plant, it takes attention and patience and love.  Then there are particularly high maintenance plants and I never thought of myself as high maintenance but now I see what a delicate flower my love has always been. Very few people ever made it blossom and couldn't see the beauty of what it would come to be.  And now that all of those special conditions were met it grew - upward, outward, inward.  It blossomed into the most amazing thing I could ever imagine - the stuff of dreams.  It can't ever be uprooted though.  It will only die.  So it will live and thrive only planted in his yard.  But he no longer needs to tend to it the way he once did.  The roots are so deep now they reach the water and nourishment inherent in the earth and it can feed itself and continue to grow.  It needed extra time and care to grow so much but finally it did and even through the cold and dry spells with which nature challenges life, this love is now strong enough to hold its own.  So now he can go on and tend to new flowers in his garden but any time he should look back she will still be growing strong and beautiful right where he left her.  He's a fool to think anyone but him could have made her grow the way she did.  There were people who tried and people who thought they were trying when she was dying before their very eyes.  All the beauty she has come to know and blossom into is the work of his skilled hands.  She was given everything she needed to grow up strong and beautiful over the past few seasons and though this winter is a little hard, as winters usually are for those who succumb to nature's cycles, the spring thaw is bound to bring the most glorious flowering this plant has ever known.  Never has she been more full and more grounded and more ready to open up and show the world her true and special beauty.  And she's ready for him to move on and plant new flowers in his garden.  She knows when it's hard for her to see in the shade of the new flowers all she has to do is reach for the sun.  She will always remember the lessons of her love and what it takes to continue to grow in the absence of special attention.  She did grow a bit dependent on the nourishment he so readily provided but now it's someone else's turn to claim that special extra time and care.  She was afraid for a while she might wither and die but she knows now how strong she is and feels how deeply rooted she's become.  And who knows, maybe if she keeps growing and reaching for the sun he'll decide she's more beautiful than all the other flowers in his garden and when he's finished planting he'll look at all the pretty flowers and come back and spend some time looking at her again.  It's possible that's just the stuff of dreams but dreams are a sort of nourishment especially when reality is bitter and cold.  And so this love is rooted in reality AND the stuff of dreams.  And this is what makes it TRUE LOVE.

Sometimes in life, it's a forever thing.