Core Roots

I have maintained the same core group of friends since sophomore year of high school. Nine years later, I'm interested in growing without them. It's not that they are all that bad, rather, I'm not as much like them as maybe I once was. I've changed, I've grown, and I want to see the people around me also change and grow for the better. Endlessly. This group is static.

As a houseplant grows for years in the same container in which it was born, the roots reach the edge of the plastic confines, turn in on themselves, and begin to form a mass, a 'root ball.' Overtime, the root ball begins to strangle itself, chokes and kills the plant itself.

The group has become a root ball, a clusterfuck of incest and lies, heartbreak and cancer, known secrets and public shames. We know everything about each other; we can predict each others' emotions and goals, successes and failures. The group has become an entity in and of itself . Judging, engorging, lusting, hating, shaming, suspecting, cheating, enabling. It's choking itself. We're choking each other.

I can watch it all happening as if I were in the greenhouse starring into the pot. I'm not so embedded that I cannot take a blade and cut away the roots that are mine, transplant and move on. And so I will.