My Friends, The Marigolds

I always visit the marigolds when I feel like this.

When my mood is darker than the dirt below my feet, the marigolds are like tiny little suns, scaring away the rain clouds in my head.

This persistent heavy mood I find myself swimming in, where sleep and isolation make more sense than really living, is a choice, you’ll hear people say. I wonder if they’ve ever felt it, because surely, they’d know no one wakes up wanting to feel this way. Today is day 83 that I’ve woken up needing to visit the marigolds. They bloomed in the spring when everything else was coming back to life and I felt drained of it.

August has come now, and they’ll be leaving me soon, only to fall back into earth and become dust again. Sometimes I wish they’d take me with them. Can’t I return to the earth and come back beautiful …rejuvenated …brand new next spring, too?

I like to lay here at the edge of the marigolds, the dirt crumbling around my legs that I’ve forgotten to shave for some time now, staining the same dress I’ve worn all week.

It really doesn’t matter. There is no one to impress with my looks anyhow.

Anyway, it’s the marigolds that keep me going. I like to think that just maybe, they enjoy my visits. Sometimes when I talk to them, they blow in the breeze. Their pungent stench swirls in the air, wrapping me up like a stinky blanket. Most people hate the smell of marigolds, but I find it endearing. They’re beautifully imperfect, you could say.

Aren’t we all?

See why I call them my friends? They teach me little lessons like that. If they can be loved despite their imperfections, I can love mine too.

Its too hard to talk to humans about feeling like a thousand-pound block of concrete. When someone asks,

How are you?

and you respond with anything other than

Fine

their eyes start to glaze over and the conversation goes quiet.

Not with marigolds though. They just keep standing tall, petals open to the world, proudly spreading their stink to all who come near.

Brave little marigolds.

I’m sure the fact that I’ve made friends with flowers may not be a favorable fact if I were to seek help for this extended gray mood of mine. Certainly any professional may throw around “psychosis” or “hallucinations” if I call a flower a friend.

There’s just so much you can learn from nature, though, don’t you think?

If you were laying here with me next to this huge expanse of marigolds, you’d also hear the distant song of tree leaves dancing in the daylight. It’s true that I mostly feel dark, or even, feel nothing, but laying here with my eyes closed, reveling in the comfort of the pitch-black back of my eyelids, the trees sway peacefully in the distance, telling me I can sing and dance to my own song as well.

The marigolds, the grass, the dirt, the sun, the rain, the trees…

They don’t worry about existing, they just exist. When they’re done existing, they are happy to give back to the earth. I’ve learned from laying here listening to nature that no, this guttural feeling of despair and exhaustion isn’t a choice. I’ve learned that we are all just existing however it is that we’ve happened to show up. While I wait for my cloud to be lifted on days most would say are already filled with sunshine, I’ve learned its ok to accept myself just like this, because the marigolds don’t seem bothered if they’re in a bit of a rough patch.

The ones with ripped petals or a small supporting bush don’t soak up life any less than the others. They’re all just there, together, cheering each other on in the rustling of their stems.

The message I hear when I lay with my friends is that perhaps we don’t have to fix ourselves before we’re ready. So I’ll rest here until its time for the marigolds to return back to the earth if I need to, and then perhaps, once they’ve gone, I’ll have the strength to rise up and live again.