Ever since I was a little kid I loved plants. Their shape, color, smell, and texture made me believe that each leaf and stem had its own personality and story it had to tell. My Mommy taught me that. She would sit me on the porch of our little blue house and I would watch her do magic; placing each flower bud into the ground making sure to converse with each of them, “para que se pueden dar mejor” [so that they would grow better] she would claim. 

My Mom didn’t know it at the time but from that day forward I would talk to every single plant I would ever grow. I didn’t entirely know why I was doing it but it brought me comfort knowing that my plants would be prosperous if I talked to them just like my Mom did. 

For the entire past year I slowly stopped collecting and caring for new plants, nothing specific triggered me to stop but there was a constant and slow distancing of the type of person I was previously. I think in a type of way we all felt some sort of shift our junior year. Whether that shift brought us good or bad we can all learn something from it. I still don’t entirely know what junior year taught me,but what I do know is that it made me a stronger person today. You have to ask yourself, “Why did things go the way they did?” There are so many factors to life that it’s always so challenging to find the exact spot where things changed. Society has a way of changing you. You do things to fit in or gain the acceptance of others that you sometimes forget who you are deep inside and by the time you realize what’s happening, it’s usually too late. For some this quarantine is the worst thing in the world and for others it’s a much needed break. I must admit, I would love to go back out into the world to have fun and socialize with others but at the same time quarantine has brought me so many hidden gems about myself that I had forgotten or pushed aside. 

With not much else keeping me busy I purchased a new baby succulent for my room and told him about the year I had just experienced. Although I am fully aware that plants don’t talk or have a brain, I would like to think he was listening, plants have a way of doing that. 

So much time had passed and yet I still felt the same feeling of euphoria I had experienced watching my Mom plant flower buds as a little boy. Although one might not share the same connection with plants, I would like to encourage everybody to reflect on themselves and to remember the things they push aside that make us unique and shape our character because at the end of they day we are all still the same little kids we were before, just altered into society conforming young adults.