One of Many

I am a rose bud closed and shy, my young emotions tucked tightly inside myself to protect from exposure. When threatened, as a new rose my thorns ward off outsiders and tell them to leave me be. My petals are soft and virgin, never knowing sunlight or cold, void of touch or expression. They are pure, still growing, underdeveloped and quite fragile. I become a young bud, ready to sense the world around me. I am curious to feel sunlight. I am becoming aware of myself and I watch to see how the other flowers open themselves. My feelings are developing inside the petals within and I am in the world. As a maturing rose, I become strong enough to open my petals and expose my feelings. I allow myself to feel the rain on them and let it roll off of them as tears for those I have hurt with my thorns, and for the happiness I feel to be open and free. The sun feels warm on my moist foilage, and I am strong, capable of pollinating, and I welcome the chance. The world is new, and though naive, I am in my prime, standing out amongst the others. As an aging flower, I find it harder to lift my head up. My vibrant petals have darkened and shrunken and I am withered, having lived a full life cycle. My petals each represent the emotions I was designed to feel in this lifetime. Hunger, thirst, sadness, contentment, desire, regret, love and thankfulness. As I feel the complete experience of each emotion to it's fullest, each petal represented therein may fall off. Each one, discarded to the earth and when you see me bare with no petals, you will be sad that I am almost gone but I will rejoice because I will know I am complete. I have done what I came to do, and though others may have been considered more beautiful, they took nothing away from the beauty that I encompassed within. Even as I harden and dry out, petal less, shriveled and dying, I am grateful for the experience to have known life for it is better to have lived and died than to never have existed at all.