Lovely Mess
If you’re like me, your mind is like a garden. There are beautiful flowers, but there are also weeds growing in the brush. I, unfortunately, spent far too much time focusing on the weeds. It took a long time for me to appreciate the way my brain worked, and yet, I still spend most days wishing that those damn weeds wouldn’t engulf the flowers. “Lovely Mess” has taken quite a journey from where the idea originally stemmed. Okay, enough with the garden analogies. We get it.
Let’s rewind to a time long before Black Orchid Fashions was even a possibility. I was 19 years old and stuck in this weird limbo state. I felt like I didn’t fully know who I was or what I was going to do with my life, as most 19-year old’s feel. I fell for a guy. HARD. Yeah, “a guy”. One day, he played me a song. He called it OUR SONG. “I think we’d make a lovely mess”, the song goes. Yuck. Toxic, right? Well, at the time, I thought it was the most romantic shit possible. He talked about us getting matching tattoos based on the song. YOU GUYS, I didn’t get the tattoo. THANK-FUCKING-GOD!
Originally, “Lovely Mess” was about 2 people who came together; both broken in their own way, but somehow saved(*gag*) each other. One was crumbling into pieces and the other fading away into dust. That’s some morbid shit right there. Yet I kept coming back to that design FOR YEARS.
FUN FACT: just the other day, I found a (really bad) drawing I did in my junior(?) year of high school that was eerily similar to the original “Lovely Mess” design. I guess I’ve just always been a depressed, romantic.
Even after everything had crashed and burned with “the guy”, Lovely Mess still floated in the back of my mind. I spent a lot of time going back and forth on whether or not I should actually get the tattoo. Not for him. Not even for me. I’m not entirely sure what for. Closure? Memories? Who knows!
I spent the next few years growing and moving on with my life; I moved to a new city, I cut toxic people from my life, I made new friends, and I even found love in the most unexpected way (apparently there aren’t just creeps and fuck boys on those dating apps). Suddenly, miraculously, it changed. “Lovely Mess” wasn’t about 2 people anymore. It became a self-portrait.
Once again, we bring back the garden analogy.
I spent most of my life focused on the weeds in my mind. I saw myself as flawed and damaged, and I dwelled on that. I always wanted to believe that there could be flowers blooming inside me, but I just never noticed they were already there. Sometimes we spend so much time focusing on everything wrong, that we don’t see all the wonderful things happening around us. It took me a long time to realize that. I still have to remind myself to focus on the flowers every day.
My mind is a garden. But, now, there aren’t quite as many weeds as there used to be. I take time to appreciate the flowers. I still acknowledge the weeds, but I don’t focus on them as I once did. I love the beauty I carry with me and hope you all love the beauty you have too.
Take pride in your mind!