Watering Flowers

I would like to preface this by saying I hate flowers, plants, or anything else that doesn't have a voice to remind me that its there. Their innate silence collides with my lack of memory and things die. They can't tell me when they have had enough water or not had their fill. I could water them some and they still really need or want more and i don't give it to them because they didn't tell me it wasn't enough. How do I know when they silently oblige, allowing me to continue doing what I am doing despite the pain or destruction it is causing them. Their silence isn't consent, but it might as well be.

Have you ever felt so powerful that it scared you? Have you ever been taken back by the ability you have to take power over the things that are weaker than you are? When I was little I got a pet rabbit for Christmas one year. Her name was Buttercup and when she was a baby I thought she was the most wonderful gift I had ever received. The only problem was that Buttercup smelled horrible. I tried to keep her in my bedroom but the smell of her cage, no matter how often i cleaned it, gave me horrible headaches. So eventually my dad built her a wooden cage outside by the fruit trees. The bottom of the cage was just wiring so that when she pooped it would fall out of the bottom and there would be no requirement for me to clean it. This seemed like a spectacular idea until the poop just built up under her cage and flies and bugs swarmed. Buttercup became big and hard to hold and she had a tendency to bite...the less I held her the less she was comfortable being held. My dad used to work out in the yard all the time and so he would constantly remind me to feed her and clean up her cage and hold her etc etc. But when my dad died the reminders faded away. For awhile I realized she was a connection point for my dad. She was a gift from him and for some reason there was something about her that helped me believe my dad had once been real...that his life hadn't just been a figment of my imagination. But that desperation faded as life got busy. The poor rabbit sat outside in that cage for months with no attention. Some days I would get sad and think about how awful life for her must be. Trapped in a small cage hanging over your own waste, alone. One summer when I was in middle school I had a busy month ahead of me and I didn't really think much about it. I went to summer camp for a week and then was picked up from summer camp by my friends family who then took us to the beach for two weeks. I returned from that trip long enough to unpack, wash my clothes, and leave the next day for another week long camping trip with my family. One night during that last camping trip I realized I hadn't fed Buttercup before i left...and in a panic i asked my mom to call and have someone make sure she had food. My mom agreed and I didn't think much about it until we got home. We got home when it was dark and I remember walking into my room to unpack and my mom followed me in and told me Buttercup had died while we were gone. I tried to shake it off and act like it was no big deal...i mean i didn't even like taking care of her anyway. My mom said something about not remembering to give her water or food while I was at summer camp and that she had fried out in the unbearable summer heat. What an awful death. Slow. Painful. Lonely. You may say Bethany, you were young. It wasn't your fault. But the same thing happened when my high school boyfriend gave me a pet bunny when he went away to college. She started off living in my room until it made me sick. She therefore had to move outside...only her cage was smaller. Summer came. She was out of sight and out of mind...and she died. Every time i step on a bug or swat a fly I am ridden with this sickening sense of power. I exert my will on something smaller and weaker...something unable to fight for itself. In my hands I could take the only life they knew and literally stamp it out of existence. I am just as bad as an abuser. It's the reason I cry anytime i accidentally step on a snail or see worms sizzling out in the sun after the rain clouds have disappeared. I frantically try to put them all back in the moist ground, hoping my good will somehow over ride the bad. You see I hate that in each of those things i see myself...and i feel helpless. Forgotten. Silenced. I see that look... the look when the fighting has stopped and the knowledge of the inevitable settles in. Eyes glazed over, you simply have to mentally take yourself as far away as you can without ever having to leave the position you are molded into. Its a look of begrudging survival.

It was never in those moments that I hated my bunny. I never even hated the bugs or the snail. It's that my desires or needs were more pressing or seemingly important than their voice or lack there of. I didn't give it a second thought until it was too late. I took their whole world only because I was too focused on a single moment in my own. It came at their expense...and it cost me nothing...but took from them everything. It's just a rabbit or insect you say...and I kinda get that. I guess its more that i am faced with what I am capable of and it terrifies me. The power I, or any of us, have is greater than we like to believe. I never want to get to a point where I am desensitized to the frailty of life. I never want to get to a point where I can see the empty look of death in the eyes of something smaller and more vulnerable then I am and not be moved, unchanged. I never want to become so distracted by my own wants that I stop seeing the cost that it comes at for anther animal, person, or living thing. The fact that its not intentional is what scares me. If it was something I did with purpose at least I would know how to change it. Instead I feel like I walk around with this capability inside of me to be evil, like it could strike at any moment without me even meaning to have it happen. It makes me feel like a time bomb. And what brought all this up you ask me? Watering flowers. Yep, I'm in charge of watering flowers and plants and they don't talk to me or remind me they need to be watered and i forget and they die. They suffer because I can't remember something so simple. It's not rocket science. And so I drive myself insane every day at this point trying to remember to water the flowers...and remember to care if I have watered the flowers...and remember to remember that my actions can either bring life or bring death. The power rests in my hands. I must use it wisely.