The Arc of Gardening Bends Toward Order
I don’t know where this entry will take us today, but I’m practicing just STARTING instead of worrying too much about the outcome.
It’s weird, because I’ve always fancied myself a “doer,” someone who TAKES ACTION, someone who GETS THINGS DONE. (Don’t ask me what those ALL CAPS are about, either. Maybe they’re a way to have healthier outbursts.)
The truth is, I’m just impulsive.
I used to think my parents were too scared to move. They seemed to meet every new possibility with the question, “But what if…?” The answer was always worse than just standing still, according to them.
We never went anywhere, never did anything, never fucking CHANGED. Nothing ever fucking changed.
There’s a scene in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” when they’re running from the posse, which seems to be always the same distance from them, always moving at the same speed.
Butch Cassidy: Don't they get tired? Don't they get hungry?
Sundance Kid: They gotta be.
Butch Cassidy: Why don't they slow up? Hell, they could even go faster, at least that'd be a change. They don't even break formation. Do something.
DO SOMETHING. Even if it’s worse.
Now, of course, I know what it is to literally be unable to afford any mistakes, and I’ve only been responsible for myself, most days.
My impulsive behavior has grown to be something more, or rather has helped me grow . I believe it keeps me from letting inertia drag me all the way down to the bottom, even when the bottom is the quietest place. I believe it tempers my “hall-monitor-ness.” (I heard that. I said it tempers it, not that it makes it disappear.)
It’s like this: Solar is great, when the sun is shining, and even for a bit after it clouds up, but if it doesn’t clear up, eventually you’ll have to use the generator. Impulsive behavior is my generator.
There are fewer cloudy spells these days, (though I always have an eye on the forecast,) and the behaviors themselves are less destructive. There is far less fallout from purchasing a pair of shoes I’ll never wear than from getting married. (cough)Twice.
***
When I quit drinking, a little over three years ago, I started gardening again. My attempts at moderation and then abstinence had failed, which wasn’t entirely unexpected. During the summer of 2017 (I think) I checked myself into a detox center, and after drying out there and going back to my life, I was able to stay sober for almost exactly 60 days. It was incredibly lonely. I also believed at that point that moderation was possible for me, but it only took three or four days to get right back to my regular drinking habits.
In 2020, I made the (impulsive) decision to quit drinking on my 50th birthday. I knew that I had to plan for as many things as possible that had derailed me in the past. Things like constipation! Things like FOMO! Things like loneliness.
Connection is a word you hear a lot in the recovering community, and the conversation seems to focus on making connections with other people, and that is important, of course. So we get some new hobbies, we go to activities where we can meet other lonely recovering people, we try to maintain relationships that weren’t completely built on our mutual love of martinis and destructive behavior.
Very often, we find it to be too hard. It IS too hard.
I began to study on why those connections weren’t the key to my sobriety. Am I picking the wrong hobbies, the wrong boring socials , the wrong people?
The answer to those questions was, for me, a resounding, “YES!”
Slowly at first, and then very suddenly, I realized that there was one person in the world that I needed to connect with more than anyone else, and that person was ME.
(Y’all probably figured that out several paragraphs back.)
Once I saw it, everything else seemed to fall into place. I had to go back and get the 14-year-old girl I was when I became an alcoholic and set her on a different path, quite literally.
Together we started to remember what we liked to do before, and make a list. Some things were easy: reading, gardening, walking in the woods, listening to music.
Other things, like being alone, were not as obvious. Being alone isn’t a hobby per se, but I could see that all of my favorite activities in childhood were ones that could, and often should, be enjoyed in solitude.
I can point to moments when I learned that my solitude was less important than the comfort, whether perceived or actual, of those around me, and I traded it for the lie that I would never feel alone, that my sacrifice would earn me love and constancy and favor.
It was so clear. It was like being slapped, rather: sharp, and the pain of it was immediately lost in the surprise of it. I may have tasted blood.
After that, I knew that it didn’t matter what the hobbies were, I just needed to learn how to be alone. To start believing that I deserve solitude, that I deserve a healthy connection with my SELF, that no companionship is worth giving those things up for.
And still, I went back to a couple of those dear old friends: Books, with whom I could feed a love of learning and language, and that contradictory sensation of being in and out of one’s body simultaneously (which, incidentally is a thing that alcohol mimics pretty well- -go figure); and gardening, which has too many possible benefits to list, but I think what makes it a nearly perfect way to spend time is that it fully occupies every one of your five senses, and maybe your sixth, allowing your mind to both focus and wander - - another structurally sound contradiction. (Alcohol does this, too, but the results are almost always chaotic, whereas the arc of gardening bends toward order.)
Anyway, I was sitting in some poison ivy, probably, one morning, watching the grass grow and the mist rising off the river, and I noticed a snail on a leaf. I’m not gonna wax poetic about this snail, but I will tell you that the scientific word for “eyestalk” is “ommatophore.” (Guess what “ommatophobia” is.)
I watched this shelled slug do its thing for a long while, and chose the snail as my spirit animal, and the rest is history. Well, not really, but this entry needs to be!
I got a cool tattoo recently of my spirit animal, which you can see here.