"Some Flowers Bloom Dead", & So Do Some People

Spring is the season of hope and renewal, the time when we look to the rising sun as a beacon of better days just beyond the horizon. Those days have always been there, merely shifted further south during the cold of the winter. The position of the sun has no bearing on the mechanisms that unlock our lot in life, but we like to tinker with the gears of an astrolabe, because there is something calming in the belief that the right sequence of pins and cogs can grant us that which we have long dreamed of.

The equinox is the moment of equilibrium, where the light and dark are balanced out upon the world (as a whole). It is a moment when we can take stock and try to feel ourselves steady on our feet as the tilt shifts from one side to the other. We can in theory, but not all of us can do so in practice. For some of us, Spring is a reminder that some land is fallow, some dreams will never germinate, and some faith has been salted like Carthage.

I was seventeen the first time I heard The Wallflowers' song "Some Flowers Bloom Dead". That means I was not yet old enough to be considering the philosophical and psychological damage done by remaining hidden from the light. While I loved the song for other reasons, it was much later on that it became woven into my mind as a statement of everything that has afflicted me.

Though the song is one about a relationship, excising the verses turns it into a meditation on self-loathing, a mantra that tears down rather than builds up.

"In another world I could learn to forget/But 'til then I'm here making room for new regrets"

Regret is as much a part of life as oxygen and water, and perhaps science will one day break atoms down so far we find regret is the true basis of all matter in the universe. Often, it feels as if it is the main component in my construction. Regret is the autobahn in my mind, the path where thoughts are able to speed from brain to heart to soul and back again faster than any other. Every decision ever made comes with the potential for regret, and unless you are fortunate enough to know you have made the right ones time and again, regret is fed with a constant supply of fuel.

Around this time every year, I start to think about what the warmth of the summer could bring, what hope I could find that emerging from hibernation will not lead me straight into the mouth of another cave. I have told myself these stories for years, enough of them that I know the words by heart, so much so they have lost all meaning and dissembled into gibberish.

"Now some flowers they never bloom/And some flowers they just bloom dead"

We look upon the beauty of nature without giving much thought to the law of averages. While we see the vibrant colors and the rainbow of life, there is a percentage of seeds that never sprout, a proportion of those plants that never grow properly or blossom as they should. It is through no fault but ignorant fate, but being forgotten only serves to further constrict the pain of never spread petals.

Each year that passes, I know the chances of being awakened from this wretched slumber move closer to zero. Much as there is a time to stop breathing life into a body that has expired, there is also a time to stop feeding the delusion that there is any color to be found if the shadows are to be illuminated.

Then, in the last verse, we are told:

"Now when I think of me/I think I somebody else instead/As if it wasn't hard enough"

Regret comes in many forms, but in one of the more extreme we regret the very fact of being ourselves. It is a refrain I have sung many times, and one that has only grown louder as the pieces have started to fit together. People will often give the advice to 'love yourself', which they mean with the best of intentions. What they don't realize, however, is that sometimes the things we hate about ourselves are immutable, they are baked into the very fibers of the plaster we are cast from. We can no more pull upon them and stay together as you can remove the base of a house of cards.

When you are faced with that kind of regret, the thought of blooming is not merely a longing that will never be realized, it's a fear of what is revealed if it does. Perhaps the reason some flowers don't bloom is because they are sparing the eyes of the world a sight they do not want to see. Perhaps that is what I have been doing all along.

Either way, you cannot pry the petals of a flower open and expect it to thrive, nor can you cut through the sinew to expose your heart to the open air.

There's too much regret in the way.