Category — you reap what you sow

The earth is thawing nicely in the Southeast. I found myself in the front beds with a trowel and a bag full of calla lily bulbs and lily of the valley roots. Quite a few of my attempts to dig a hole just big and deep enough to bury a bulb became excavation missions; my trowel revealed small stones and a few rocks the size of my face. I moved them only far enough to make room for the bulbs, tossing them to the back of the bed or positioning them somewhere else that pleased me.

What is just a very flat spot in the dirt around some old juniper stumps will burst forth from the ground. Sprout pretty green leaves and sturdy, waxy blooms that will return every year when the wind turns warm and carries the smell of summer sweetened grass. Despite the care I took in measuring the depth of their homes and tenderly covering them up, I found myself doubtful. I realized that I was struggling to believe that I had given them what they needed, that they would do what I wanted them to.

It isn’t a wholly unreasonable position. They are living things, and all living things are subject to failure, death and fruitlessness. Still, why bother to so mindfully plant them only to doubt their ability to survive?

Because if I don’t expect them to come up, it won’t hurt as badly if they don’t.

Except: that is a total big fat fucking lie. There’s an eighty five percent chance of tears if I don’t have calla lilies and lily of the valley in my front beds this summer, and a one hundred and ten percent chance of foot stomp. This little game I play about managing my expectations will only fuel daily inspections and frequent hand-wringing. I’ll tell myself that my hypervigilance offers me some security, which is the biggest fattest fucking lie there ever was, forever.

Looking at my friends and family sitting around the table later that night, I saw loving eyes and sweet faces, but I also saw gardeners, tenderly planted bulbs, and rocks. We are our own gardeners, we are each other’s rocks, and if our plantings don’t burst forth in bloom, we will still have each other. Most bulbs do sprout, though, and ours are more likely to bloom than to fail. Isn’t that the knowledge behind our willingness to so carefully plant them?

This space has been startlingly silent lately, and for those of you who might be new, that means I’m trying not to reveal exactly what has been rolling around within. Determining the exact cause of my hesitance has been an exercise in futility, and that’s been the source of indescribable frustration. It appears to be comprised of two parts fear and one part discretion; these things have rarely served me well in life, in love, or on the page. So I’ve made the decision to dispense with them directly.

Happiness is a damn precarious state to live in if you’re unaccustomed.  A combination of justified realism and the lowest tolerance for uncertainty known to the species propel me to look for the ending, the fall, the hook, the catch.   It’s always interesting and a little surprising to find out who among one’s social circles is threatened or embittered by one’s rise to grace, and I was more than a little disgusted to find myself on the list. I am seemingly incapable of declaring my happiness without the obligatory <cue anvil> disclaimer.

I think that’s why I’ve been so angry with the last few people to cross me; they are the safe, external personifications of my own self-destructive thought patterns. Hating them is easier than hating the parts of myself that do their work while they skip merrily along with their lives. It’s also much lighter work than letting go of their tired refrain.

As it turns out, I am not all that demanding, and my expectations are more than reasonable compared to what I have to offer. I am as deserving of love and happiness as anyone else is in this world, and my joy only causes pain for those who cannot face their own demons. There isn’t any reason to be suspicious or superstitious, because the only difference between something that works and something that doesn’t is the intention and the effort behind it. There isn’t some kind of cosmic logic that conspires to take from me what I choose to believe in.

There are only people who are too closed up, bitter and lazy to invest of themselves- the very same people that have that stale belief that love springs from some finite source- that what is given cannot be replenished. Which is quite possibly the worst way to live and love.

Somewhere between fielding snarky comments from miserable people, encouraging my sister to take her own risks and uphold her own standards, and stretching my zen muscles in various airports, it became very clear to me, once again, that we find what we seek in this world. Love, hate, success, failure, betrayal- it is all there for the taking, and we choose what seeds we nurture.

The final straw, though, was fielding a friendly yet earnest death threat.

“If you break his heart…”

That small, simple reminder that I have as much control and responsibility as anyone else, the realization that giving in to my fear and guilt is endangering him as much as it endangers me, the undeniable truth that you steer towards what you concentrate on, gave me the courage to starve the seeds of fear and nurture hope.

I hadn’t truly considered that I might not be the only person to be vulnerable and end up hurt; my concern was looking like a fucking idiot for believing in yet another emotionally unavailable zombie who only knows that old dance of seducing and withdrawing. There is a special place in hell for men who do this and are also charming enough to manipulate women into thinking that they are requiring too much in exchange for their affection and attention.

I hadn’t truly considered that I was accepting unacceptable behavior from frenemies because I viewed it as a penance to be paid in exchange for the incredible joy that this man has brought to my life. The hatred, jealousy and denigration put just enough of a tarnish on my unadulterated bliss to make it seem possible, attainable. My poor little heart couldn’t just soak up all that light without what I had been so sadly trained to believe was enough requisite darkness to keep my universe in balance.

So there it is. I’m happy. I’m involved in something worth believing in, with someone who is more than I ever hoped to find. Frankly, I find myself wishing there were new words to use, because I never would have used most of them to describe anything or anyone else if I had known this first.

I’m finally getting what I deserve, and I welcome the responsibility to deserve what I’m getting. That means weeding fear, bitterness and failure from my heart’s garden.

If you’re getting the cold shoulder from me, maybe you should ask yourself: how does your garden grow?

My darling, my sweetheart
I am in your sway
To cold climes comes springtime
So let me hear you say

My love:
I am going to stand my ground
They rise to me and I’ll blow them down
I am going to stand my ground
They rise to me and I’ll blow them down

- decemberists “rise to me”