Loving a drug addict is like hugging a cactus.
What happens though, if the cactus fails to flower? If the green of it loses color and no matter how much you water it, the cactus plant, dies?
What then? What are you to do, the cactus hugging addict lover?
I have asked myself this exact question many times since I originally wrote of the cactus. I've lived in great and debilitating fear of the tending of my precious cacti, that I wouldn't do it right, that I'd somehow fail at it.
I watered them from afar. I clipped, soiled, as best I could. I became in a way, just like them. Addicted. Addicted to the desire to save my plants.
As it turns out, there’s a bit of cactus in us all.
In the end, I lost a plant. A beautiful and lovely, jack of all trades, brave and adventurous, insanely funny plant - a pivotal part of my life, my first best friend, my partner in crime. I lost a cactus and now all I can think of is the emptiness that remains.
Grief upon grief upon grief. It is suffocating in a way I didn't experience the last time, and every part of me aches.
There is nothing we can do. Nothing in our power to save it, the plant. I am simply grateful that I always, without fail, saw the blooms. That I remembered to hug him, my cactus, though now it bleeds me out.
Hug yours, friends. Hug your plants and hug your people.
