Aloe Vera and Nihilism

I feel like the condition of my Aloe Vera plant is a direct representation of my current state of mental health and general giving-a-shit-ness at any given time in my life. It's stuck it out with me for years now, even though I'm an awful, neglectful owner. It's supposed to be next to impossible to kill Aloe Vera through neglect, but I've come pretty darn close.

I'll pass by on my way out the door and see it sitting there, withered and sad looking, with a million little dry, shriveled-up tendrils just staring at me, saying, "Why?" And every time, this weird, awful part of me just looks away in shame, thinking, It's hopeless; this plant will never come back from such mistreatment. or I'll water it tomorrow. I don't have the time or energy right now. I'm too filled with this pervasive sense of self-hatred from letting it get this bad to take a minute and thirty seconds to go to the kitchen, get a cup down from the cabinet, fill it with water, and pour it into its arid little home, thereby solving the problem.

Until one day when I look just a little too long and say to myself, "Alright, it's time to get my shit together." And so I water it, pick off the dead parts, push the roots deeper into the soil, and within days, I see it become healthier and spring back to life. Those times seem to miraculously coincide with the times when I'm trying to better myself- clean my apartment, wash my sheets, do all the things I've been putting off for ages, run errands, put in a few job applications, actually plan for a future instead of just living for right now and maybe tomorrow.

So when I pass by for the next couple of days and see it looking like a plant instead of a painful reminder of why I should never be given any real responsibility, it's like it looks on me approvingly and says, "Good job. See what you can do when you actually give a shit?"

This is the part where I tie my post up with a neat little bow, turn it into a parabolic life lesson, and challenge you to figure out what your "Aloe Vera plant" is. Then I'm supposed to urge you to, instead of neglecting it and letting it dig you deeper into your cocoon of guilty procrastination, deal with it head-on and let its presence be a reminder that you're not such a failure at everything after all. But I'm not going to kid myself into thinking that watering a plant has suddenly made me qualified to give advice on life. So instead, I'll leave you with a picture of my plant.