The Orchid

There is an orchid, looking longingly at how beautifully the other flowers bloom. The flowers surround it everywhere, mocking it with their abundance of petals and the ease with which they blossomed. The Orchid has been trying for years, fighting as hard as it could, to blossom as well. But for years, it failed, only barely surviving.

And now, it’s tired. Year after year, The Orchid watches the other flowers freely shed their petals, bitter that they so easily take for granted something that The Orchid has been yearning for its whole life: beautiful petals of its own. Petals that have been eternally out of reach.

But little does The Orchid know, and little do they know, that orchids do not blossom like other flowers. The Orchid is drowning, its roots rotting, as its caretaker waters it once a day like they do for the other flowers. But the Orchid should only be watered once a week. The Orchid is burning in the direct sunlight, placed with all of the other flowers, when it needs a cooler temperature and indirect sunlight to blossom.

Consequently, The Orchid has been slowly rotting as it drowns in its caretaker’s misguided attempts to blossom it. Burning as the sun beats down on it day after day, but never being moved into the shade, The Orchid is slowly dying as it never accesses the type of light it needs; all the while ignorant to the cause of its malady.

The Orchid can only suffer as its caretakers say “I’m giving you everything you need! Why aren’t you blossoming?” with the frustration growing in their voices. The other flowers think it’s weird as they comment in a cavalier ignorance “You have everything we have and we can do it so easily! Why can’t you?” 

All The Orchid can do to protest is indignantly cry out “I’m doing the best I can!” 

As time marches on, The Orchid grows weaker and weaker. Every year it loses pieces of what little hope it has left, the only thing keeping it fighting: hope that it too, will blossom. The Orchid’s caretakers write it off as a defective flower, the other flowers scorn it as weird, and The Orchid itself believes it’s broken. When in reality, all that’s needed is a different environment.