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Dear Jacky,
When I was in my early twenties, living in my very first apartment on my own, my friend and her husband set me up with a date to go to a military ball with them. My date brought me a bouquet of roses. To this day, they are probably the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever received and they came from a stranger who I spent a few hours at a dance with and that is the end of that story. However, I do think there’s probably something poetic in there about savoring perfect moments in life and appreciating the kindness of strangers.
When you move into your first apartment, it’s a little bit like a kid playing house. I remember my group text being full of pictures of Hamburger Helper charred to a crisp and the resulting Zaxby’s meal that was purchased after, along with a quote about how much money and time the crispy Hamburger Helper wasted and how they should have purchased Zaxby’s to begin with. These memories they make me laugh now while at the time life just felt a bit like a struggle. We were living our lives like college kids but also working real jobs. I’ll never know how we stayed up til the wee hours of the night and still made it to work on time gigantic iced coffees in hand. We were pretending to be adults while our group texts and Twitter feeds hinted we were still kids.
My first apartment had little to no furniture because well furniture costs a lot of money. So I bought a mattress and used the plastic three-stack drawers and a Target lamp from college as my side table. I borrowed an old dresser from my grandmother and what probably was a small coffee table from my parents and used it as a TV stand. My uncle gave me a giant box TV that the next year the cable guy told me was incompatible with the cable line because it was so outdated. It took me months to buy a couch from Big Lots. I was so proud of that purchase and eventually an Ashley Home Furniture giant coffee table that my parents hate and always suggest I sell from an outlet furniture store. I still have that coffee table today. I love it and I’m never getting rid of it. Sorry mom and dad. My breakfast table was a dining room table that you could condense down to six spots from my grandmother’s house after she moved to a nursing home. So you may be asking what do these flowers from the military ball have to do with anything. I took those flowers and put them in a vase and put them on my breakfast table and I took a picture. The picture you see above. I felt like my interior design skills rivaled the best of home decor magazines. Reminder…Instagram influencers weren’t a thing but if they had been..I would have felt like an influencer. Those flowers made my house feel perfect.
Choose the joy and the hope even when it’s hard.
molly INCLÁn
Later on I started dating a guy and he would come by after he got off work and pick me up to go on a date. I know you’re probably thinking so old fashioned. Yes, he actually parked in the parking lot and would knock on my front door to take me on a date. A far cry from how dating goes these days. So I decided I should go to the store and buy flowers to recreate the ambiance of my perfect grown up apartment. I’m sure we would laugh at how bare it was. It probably looked more like a flea market sale of mismatched furniture and hand me down paintings.
I went to a store that carries cheap flowers and is known to give off vibes of fun and happiness. I did some shopping, selected some perfect flowers and got in line for checkout so I could make it home in time to get my table set before this boy I had a crush on came to pick me up for date night. I remember being happy and smiling and waiting in this long line and when it was time for me to approach the counter to check out. The cashier said very loudly or at least that’s how it seemed to the entire store, “Are you buying flowers for yourself?” in a pitying voice. It felt like he announced to the entire store that I was buying flowers for myself and I was so embarrassed. I didn’t really think of it as buying flowers for myself as much as decorating my little apartment. There was a lady in line who was probably between the ages of mid-thirties to early-forties who quickly said to me, “I’ve been married for years and I still have to buy flowers for myself so don’t feel bad.”
That was the last time for probably about 7 years that I bought myself flowers. My address changed 4 more times over the years and a year or two after a particularly hard break up I walked into a Fresh Market….this is making you think that I shop routinely at better places than I do..it’s few and far between. I bought myself a bouquet of flowers without giving it a thought and then when I walked outside and realized what I had done, I texted my best friend to celebrate this day. Over the years, I had a lot of people personally and professionally stomp out the optimism and the happy in me. I let them take away the small joys in life. They made me feel like not only was I not enough but that treating myself was a waste or embarrassment, that being single was something sad and to be ashamed of. Buying the flowers without a second thought was a little sign that my life and myself were growing back after some harsh circumstances in life that tried to take my joy.
I hope one day you’re stopped in your tracks months after you lost your job or went through a break up or are feeling really alone or maybe like a failure…I hope you’re caught off guard when you realize you made it. You made it to the good part. The part where the storm lets up and the clouds part and you realize…no one can break your spirit or steal your happiness…unless you let them.
molly INCLÁn
As you grow older, your peers and the world around you will become more and more cynical. People lose their youthful joy and you wake up at 30 and wonder what happened to everyone? What happened was rejection and heartbreak and disappointment and regret….and the easy way out is to grow hard and pessimistic and cynical. Don’t let yourself do that. Choose the joy and the hope even when it’s hard. I promise at some point it will become difficult.
On a particularly good day, buy yourself the flowers and on an exceptionally bad day you should also buy yourself the flowers. If you’re the cashier, don’t call a single girl out for loving herself. I hope you’re the married lady in the line cheering her on. If you’re the husband of the married lady, I hope you show up on a Tuesday with flowers just because. If you have to ask yourself whether you should treat yourself, I hope you remember…you should always buy the flowers.
I hope one day you’re stopped in your tracks months after you lost your job or went through a break up or are feeling really alone or maybe like a failure…I hope you’re caught off guard when you realize you made it. You made it to the good part. The part where the storm lets up and the clouds part and you realize…no one can break your spirit or steal your happiness…unless you let them.
Always choose joy,
Molly