Bloom

My life.

One long string of conversation that never really led to anywhere.

All talk. All daydream. No destination.

I sometimes feel like one of those furry, white dandelions - caught up in a breeze. Twirling and jerking around. The wind my captor, making all my decisions for me.
I don’t think there has been any rhyme or reason or clear decision-making that has led me to this point in time, where I stand now. Everything somehow just happened. How deliciously lucky for me this is where I landed.

I muddled it all up, wasted a lot of my time but now here I am.

When I was a little girl I always had the day-dreamy notion that one day I would become a princess. My life goals were as simple as wanting to meet a prince, live in a palace with fancy ballrooms and sparkly floors and have lots of royal babies. I would own a million different lipsticks and no-one would tell me I was too little to wear them. I would dress myself in pink, puffy sleeved dresses, and have long golden hair. My prince and I would dance to Bananarama all through the night.

This was what I considered a very realistic life goal. I was complete princess material.

I had it all worked out and under control.

I cannot stress to you enough how intensely sure of this destiny I was.

I did not worry about anything at all as it was only a matter of time. I just had to wait it out.

Does every little girl start out this way?

Then somehow bit by bit life knocks this idea of themselves away.

Somewhere these naïve and overly confident feelings I had about my self-identity and path got lost. Somewhere, I became less of a princess in the making with princess clothes and princess thoughts and became complicated me; with many faults and many flaws and many opportunities fallen by the way.

I also had many people’s expectations of me and my life steering me along which makes me feel nothing but sad now.

In high school it changed from fairies and princesses to dreams of being a writer and painter who travelled to far away places like Morocco and Peru. But when it came to actual drive and ambition I was completely clueless. So envious of those that had a clear shape of what their lives were going to be and what they had to do to mould it so.
I never felt good enough to do the same, or smart enough or pretty enough. It was so complicated and very out of reach.

So I eventually yanked my head down from the clouds and let the wind take me where ever it wanted.

Life turned out mostly uneventful and I have arrived here all too quickly.

I was bobbing around in the breeze getting by on the comforting adrenalin of anticipation.

The same way a child anticipates Christmas and birthdays and summer time swims, I was holding out for all of my day dreams to eventuate.  That one day I would study something amazing like linguistics, art, or astronomy. That one day I would have the perfect job and live in the perfect house in the perfect street. That one day when I did try and scrub away all the dirt and crap that things would be shiney and perfectly clean. One day I would acheive a perfect body, smile and sunny outlook on life with always a skip in my step.

I thought it would come.

And then it didn’t.

I could quite easily feel so disappointed about this. But I actually don’t.

Because instead what I managed to fall in to, in the meantime, was this completely tangled, messy, complicated and beautiful existance somehow and I am dazed by just how fantastic it really is.

This moment, now.

The wind doesn't blow on forever...eventually leaves fall and turn to mulch.

My grandmother once said something that has always stuck with me. I think about it everytime I start to feel like I need to live up to everyone elses expectations of me and especially everytime I feel like I am failing spectacularly.

Wherever you are planted, bloom.

I might be just one small speck. Emma Brooker. I am not a mother; I am not career focused; I am not special; I am not particulary talented. I am not a size 10. I am not wealthy.

But bloom I do. In my marriage, my work, my friendships and family.

I always take care to never look down when I walk - life buzzing all around, the sky hung like a Monet painting. I breath it all in.

I plant kisses on my neice and nephews heads whenever I am within reach of them.

I laugh as loud as I can when my friends make me, I sometimes even snort a little.

And I weep whenever I need to, curling up to drown myself in the comfort of my grief and everything my dad once was.

I smile and talk to strangers when I think they have noone else to talk to.

I wrap myself up tightly with my darling love, when the wind gets too strong for me to face alone.

Beautiful complicated life, with not a palace or pink puffy dress in sight.

With no clear direction to trust and no heaviness of expectations weighing me down.

My little life.

Where I bloom.

Emma Kate xoxo