Walking Out of the Flower Shop

I just finished rewatching Little Shop of Horrors.

You know the one —

Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, a flesh-eating plant,

and all those absurdly catchy doo-wop songs.

I loved that movie when I was a kid.

The music.

Audrey.

Seymour.

The crazy dentist.

And yes — the dark humor of feeding humans to a giant plant.

Perfectly appropriate musical comedy for a poorly supervised eight-year-old.

Something I missed until I was older was the horror and hope inside Audrey’s storyline.

Audrey is the flower shop girl Seymour has a crush on.

She’s sweet, a little ditzy, and in the very first scene she has a black eye.

A black eye we quickly learn was given to her by her dentist boyfriend.

As the movie unfolds, we learn more about the relationship she’s in.

It isn’t just physical abuse.

It’s verbal.

Emotional.

Controlling.

And Audrey moves through it as if it’s normal —

because she doesn’t know any different and she doesn’t believe she deserves better.

Partway through the movie,

Seymour feeds her abusive boyfriend to the bloodthirsty plant

and Audrey and Seymour finally admit their love for one another.

Cue my favorite song in the show: Suddenly Seymour.

In that moment we watch Audrey go from downtrodden to hopeful.

And Seymour becomes the hero.

Watching the movie again today, a few things caught my attention.

The first was realizing that not one person ever told me that the relationship dynamics I watched as a little girl in so many movies and stories were unhealthy.

The second was how casually this story addresses the abuse of women.

And the third was how beautiful it was to watch Audrey finally have hope —

even though she was still placing that hope in another person.

I went into my last relationship having been mistreated by love for most of my life.

I deeply needed the story to finally be different.

So when he promised me safety, warmth, and enduring love,

he became my Seymour.

The place I built my home.

The place I opened my heart.

The place I exhaled as if I was finally safe.

We never really get to see how Audrey and Seymour’s story finishes.

I like to believe they lived happily ever after.

That Seymour never made her hurt again or question her worth.

I want to believe that story exists somewhere.

Because that isn’t how my Seymour turned out.

He was a different kind of abuser.

Not loud.

Not obvious.

Not the kind who leaves bruises anyone can see.

He was the kind dressed in community respect.

A helpful reputation.

A sports coat.

An important title.

So covert I didn’t even realize what was happening while I was inside it.

I never walked around with a black eye.

But the heaviness I carried inside me told a very clear story.

The insecurity.

The confusion.

The quiet fear.

My body knew something was wrong long before my mind could name it.

And for a long time after I learned the truth of what he did,

I couldn’t say the word.

Abuse.

I thought I was smarter than that.

Stronger than that.

I thought I would see it coming.

In my mind, abuse was obvious.

Bruises.

Screaming.

Doors slamming.

Not quiet manipulation.

Not someone who looked like a good man to everyone else,

while causing harm no one could see.

I remember talking with a friend once, when he and I were still together, about some of the things that had happened between us.

She listened for a while and then said very plainly,

“Katherine… that’s emotional abuse.”

I didn’t believe her.

I brushed it off.

Defended him.

Explained why it wasn’t really like that.

Because believing her would have meant facing something I wasn’t ready to face yet.

So I resisted the word.

I explained things away.

Minimized them.

Told myself it was complicated.

That relationships are messy.

That maybe I was just being too sensitive.

But time has a way of clearing the fog.

And the farther I got from it, the more clearly I could see what had actually happened.

The realizations came slowly at first.

Then all at once.

Eventually I understood something that took me far too long to learn.

The shame I was carrying didn’t belong to me.

It never did.

It belonged to the person who caused the harm.

So I stopped carrying it.

One by one, I laid those experiences back on his doorstep and labeled them exactly as they were.

Not misunderstandings.

Not mistakes.

Abuse.

When I watched Little Shop of Horrors as a little girl, I believed Audrey needed Seymour to save her.

That’s the story the movie tells.

But life has taught me something different.

Sometimes the person you believe is the hero turns out to be another version of the problem.

Sometimes there is no Seymour coming to rescue you.

Sometimes the real “suddenly” moment comes when you finally see the truth clearly enough to walk yourself out of the flower shop.