One of These Days

Be Fragile

Prompt: “Real beauty is in the fragility of your petals. A rose that never wilts isn’t a rose at all.”
Crystal Woods
About roses or people, do you agree?


Yes. 100%

I think there is a lot of dedication for people to look or be a certain way. There is a societal being that says so. No one wants to deal with being real in any sort of context. Even now, in the year of our lord 2020 (Even though I do this in a sarcastic manner, 2020 is making me feel like this is in incredibly poor taste), there is still a struggle to deal with both physical and mental realities. Both women and men feel like there are standards you have to live up to. I'm still learning to lean away from them.

When I was in high school I flipped both birds to societal perfections because I knew I didn't come up to muster on them. I've never been a dainty female mentally or physically and for a long time I resented myself for it. I can't even sneeze like what a female is supposed to sneeze like. I was terrified of being myself and thinking no guy in their right mind would find me attractive. I've been with my guy for sixteen and a half years and he loves me for exactly who and what I am. I wake up with my messed up sea witch looking hair and frumpy way and he tells me to my face that I'm beautiful and my hair is cute. With a straight face.

Mental health, I think especially now even though we've made strides, we're still so far away from what even constitutes as a healthy mental health system in our country. And even if hell froze over and we had a 100% perfect system tomorrow when we all woke up, how many people would use it? Especially men? For as finicky and difficult as it is for women to understand that we aren't just emotionally weak and have actual problems and that we need to figure out what they are, men just suppress them so deeply as to think they can't even show emotion during a movie or at an event in their life because that's just not how it is. There is such a structural disbelief in mental health that most people chalk up to being weak or stupid or an excuse for something, that no one wants to take any of it seriously.

I feel like that's the same way as how we approach the physical aspects of ourselves or how some see others. I am 100% towards doing things because they make you happy. Sometimes they aren't what I think look good on someone and I catch myself and tell myself that they aren't doing it for me or anyone else and that if they're happy and confident with it, then that's what matters. And it is. I hate seeing people judged because they don't fall within a narrow view of what's acceptable of what beauty is. People lose their shit over a man wearing a bun. Well, I have long hair and it drives me crazy. Could I have totally short hair and save myself the misery? Yes, but I don't want to. So if a guy didn't want to deal with his hair or it's hot out and he wants to toss it up, who cares?

We have to come to a point as a society where we care about the people and choose the people over anything else. Where the mental stability of us as a whole is important. We can't realistically move forward if we can't a) believe in the science that proves that there are things that can't just be swept under the rug or tossed into a folder of "just being emotional" or "needs to be stoic above all else" and b) believe that coming to terms with those things and finding a way to deal with or eradicate those issues.

Mostly importantly, if we aren't being real that we aren't. We can't live our lives the way we should or that we could by not admitting to ourselves who and what we are. And being accepting of what we find. I say that not just with ourselves, but also in others as well. That whole "Judge not, lest ye be judged." is something I carry with me and I think everyone should follow the same.