​

https://preview.redd.it/z41m9dm2etn61.png?width=3024&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=9d86ff044b7542392e12b1ccd7e5c05288f003e3

Here are the flowers I bought (total $25) & arranged them myself. It’s not expensive to experience a vibrant & vivacious life!

​

When I started dating my ex, I was young at the time and had to accept his declaration that he was not a “flower guy”. He thought it was pretentious and manipulative (?) to give someone flowers as if to buy their love. Love cannot be bought—I thought it was a compelling argument.

His other argument was that flowers were expensive and impractical, we needed to save money. With my help he was able to make 6 figures without a university degree; yet flowers were too much because according to him, you cannot eat them & they die quickly. He kept telling me the story of his mom not allowing him to buy gifts for anyone more than $20 and he said that story haunted him. Every time he said that, I felt so sorry for him that I forgot what I was fighting for.

I thought I could let go that side of me, despite that’s who I am basically since I was a little kid. My mom still tells me the story of four year old me not eating dinner until she went to the garden and picked a few roses for me and laid them out on the table. I don’t know what it is about flowers but they give me immense energy and joy. Whenever I have a bland day and I see little burst of colors from a vase sitting on my kitchen counter, I’m instantly reminded of the fact that I am experiencing life. And it’s magical.

Without flowers and with more things I had to let go, life with my ex became ... lifeless... unbearable, suffocating. So much that every time I happened to walk by a flower shop, I felt something in me starting to ache, an unbearable pain, drenched in deep sadness. I wasn’t so sure of myself at the time and so instantly I criticized myself and covered the pain with shame. I thought I should feel vain for wanting the flowers and wanting to be given flowers. I became shameful and fearful of myself.

It could have been a clue for me to wake up then, but my drive to keep the relationship, the cultural programming in my head was so strong that I ignored it.

Nevertheless I’m glad that now it’s all over. And since I’m free from the relationship, I’m trying my best to unlearn his control and to reclaim the colors and textures, the essence of my life. Sometimes I can still feel his influence. For example I had to justify the flowers by saying they’re only $25 to friends that visit the apartment even though they didn’t even ask me. Part of me still feels the guilt he instilled in me about getting flowers, but I persist. I persist by telling myself that I deserve them, they're a necessity to my soul and they nurture my creative self. They've always been a part of who I am, someone who has the right to live and experience life in all its vivacious colors.

I really hope some day I will be completely rid of him in my head.

Thank you ladies for having read my post! Out of curiosity, what have you been reclaiming for yourself since the end of you relationship?

- - -

Edit to add ANOTHER lesson I learn from this:

I realize now that it was like a limit test he was trying with me. Small things snowball into bigger things with time.

The fact that he didn't buy gifts felt small to me at the time, I thought since he was ambitious, and not alcoholic like my dad that should be enough.The flower thing was not a factor in my decision of leaving.

However, later I found out he's addicted to teen porn and he demanded me to be "open minded" about it.

Then when I was breaking my soul to be "open minded" about it, he demanded to put us in an open relationship (We were together for 10 years).

Annnd that was when I left. I learn my hard lesson that my small concession at the beginning opened the gate for so much more shit thrown in my way later on.