Soul Gardening no. II the one where i realize friends are what makes the world go round

If I consider my friends in my theoretical “soul garden” to be daisies, then I would want those damn cute (however clichéd) daisies to run as wild and freely as they pleased.  For most of my life I’ve cut off a lot of people who I didn’t want to be friends with or who I didn’t think were worth the time or trouble to get to know.  Sometimes it’s hard to communicate with people I barely know if I think they don’t show a genuine interest in wanting to explore the depths of my character.  For the people I have let in, however, I feel like I couldn’t live without or be apart from for more than three weeks (which could prove to be proof of my inevitable attachment to others, which is scary).  When something goes wrong in my life, an hour with one of my closest friends can begin a tremendous healing process that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to instigate within myself. 

For me, “alone-time” can mean cutting myself off from a social world that can create subtle to extreme mood swings.  I feel alienated from every other socially capable person for a week or so and end up shutting myself up in my home instead of trying to figure out a way to fix the inner problem.  If I could picture this invisible opposing force that causes me such despair at times, I would paint them as those nasty nocturnal slugs that come like night terrors.  Sometimes they decide to show their slimy, destructive selves, and sometimes they decide to stay under the covers.  The only way to tackle this predicament would be to search directly for the source. 

If I were being completely honest (let’s just say for the sake of blogging that I am) I would acknowledge that the base of my problem would be deep-seated insecurities.  For whatever reason they pop up and take the wheel in my sometimes fantasy-driven life, they entangle my mind with self-destructive tendencies to disappear within myself to escape from a seemingly suffocating world. 

My friends (my daisies) provide me with veritable reasons to give myself love and encouragement.  To remedy my (at times) somewhat dipping self-esteem, sometimes even a ten-minute conversation will suffice.  Over-analyzing a situation comes naturally to me, and if I don’t get a second, third, fourth, or fifth opinion from my friends, it can be severely wasting on my energy.  I imagine the highest highs and lowest lows of whatever circumstance I’m in, but a guiding and encouraging word or two from people I trust can keep me grounded. 

The scary part is that I tend to rely on outside advice to fix a problem in my life when I should be taking counsel as a form of guidance, not a permanent answer. 

When I think of daisies, the first words that come to my mind are companionable, steady, and agreeable.  However, I can also think of these flowers as plain and clichéd.  That’s not to say that I think of my friends this way, although I can attest that circulating throughout the same group of friends for an extended period of time can become somewhat tiring to my spirit.

Back to the soul garden:  If I want to become an experienced cultivator of the theoretical forest that is my psyche, I’m trying to recognize the unique and gratifying gifts that are my daisies, my friends and accept the weeds that disguise themselves as this seemingly commonplace flower so that I can eliminate them.  Soul gardening is a tedious but valuable process, and starting with a salute towards my friends seems like the best place to start.