Have you ever tried to picture what your soul might look like? You know, like how in movies and books, the characters will go into someone’s mind and see some physical representation of everything that person is. Lately, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Trying to imagine what my soul would look like if I just could go inside myself and see it. Afterall, wouldn’t it be so much easier to understand yourself if you could just look at a physical something that represents everything you?
When I try to picture my soul, I see an image of two flowers wrapping around each other, their stems and petals terribly entangled in a twisted mess that is chaotic and ordered, violent and calm. One flower is a lily, and the other is a rose. I don’t know why flowers are the image that comes to mind. I don’t actually know much about flowers. I guess I’ve just always liked them, because they are beautiful, mysterious and represent life. And, I don’t want the image of my soul to be something that I think is boring or ugly or lifeless.
I imagine the lily has a smooth, pure, white stem, with white leaves, soft to the touch. The rose is all black, with a rough stem covered in painful thorns and jagged leaves. The lily’s moonlight petals spread apart, a calm hand reaching out to a friend, and the midnight petals of the rose close tightly against one another, a fist clenched in anger, or protecting what it holds.
I imagine these flowers are always at war. On a good day, when the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and everything is warm, pretty and interesting, the lily grows larger, and begins to strangle the rose. When I feel free and happy, I start to forget why everything seemed so dismal the day before, the white stem tightens against the black stem, twisting around it, overtaking it. When it’s easy to smile and I think that life being good or bad is just a matter of perspective, the white petals widen and spread like they are trying to soak up the sun. If someone compliments me that day, or asks how I’m doing, or seems to genuinely enjoy my company, the white shine of the lily may even start to become a glow so bright that the black of the rose becomes an almost imperceptible shadow, and I can feel a subtle warmth in every inch of my body.
I imagine on a bad day, the rose starts to take revenge on the lily. On a day when the sky is grey and filled with clouds, and everything is cold and wet and miserable, it’s the rose’s turn to grow and tighten its stem around the lily. When I feel trapped, and sad, and all I can think about is everything I regret, the ragged leaves and harsh thorns start to rip and tear at the soft body of the white flower. When smiling feels foreign and I think life is just an endless string of hardships and failures, the black petals grow hard and sharp, and they press against the white petals, cutting them until they shrink and curl. If someone judges me that day, or doesn’t seem to notice how sad I am, or I worry that they might stop liking me, the darkness of the rose may start to spread like a cloud of poison that smothers the white of the lily until its shine becomes invisible, and my entire body feels cold and lifeless.
I imagine this battle is never ending, and the twisting and turning of the stems, the scraping of the thorns and leaves, and the chafing of the petals as they grow and shrink, constrict and loosen, spread and tighten, is the source of the constant scratching I feel in my heart, my head and my hands. But, as uncomfortable as their fighting is, when I try to imagine one of the flowers winning and replacing the other, becoming the sole vessel of my soul, the image feels wrong — Incomplete.
It scares me.
I could imagine another image, I suppose. It would be like deciding to be a new person. For now, though, this one feels right. I think part of me likes the idea of a soul that is in constant flux, always fighting, always changing. It gives me hope that someday it will evolve into something new and better. But another part of me is sick of the pain. A part of me wishes the lily and the rose could wrap around each other in a perfect helix, like a strand of DNA — strong, balanced, but still flexible.
What do you imagine your soul looks like?
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