Pernicious Little Things

Today I enjoyed myself very nicely. It was finally sunny out and I was able to work in the garden in my shirt sleeves. (Can girls say they’re out in shirt sleeves)?

I finished planting the clematis that will cover the ugly cement wall behind the lavender and I put the remaining two grape plants in place next to the swing set. I planted the kiwi and got a nice surprise when I lifted up the black rubber sand bags that were sitting where the kiwi was supposed to go; the underneath of the bags was covered in snails. And I put my hand in the slime. Blech.

I transplanted some potted daffodils that were on their last legs – we shall see what a little space to stretch their roots will do to help them perk up. And I transplanted the thyme to our raised garden bed that we just built (right next to the kitchen for all my fresh herbs). Cool, huh?

That was today.  But it has been a dark and dreary week. The sun stayed hidden and the wind bit in a March sort of way. My driving exam got pushed back because I wasn’t ready (again).  Plus … I’m working on my character.

Sigh.

I hate working on my character. I wish I had been born Baba Cool with no issues at all.  But my only foray into Baba Cool was Red Red Wine and that got me absolutely nowhere.

My life coach recommended I read the book “Women Food and God” by Geneen Roth, a book which talks about pushing past compulsive, emotional eating. I know, fun topic, hm? Those of you who want to check out of this post right now can come back in a couple of days and we’ll pretend like this conversation never happened.

When I was looking into ordering the book from Amazon, a line jumped out at me from the “sneak peek” into the book. It was this:

“It (meaning food and its link with God) marks the moment when we gave up on ourselves, on change, on life.”

I choked on that.  Who wants to admit they’ve given up on themselves, or their lives?

And yet.

What I’m reading and learning is that we develop certain patterns of coping that are necessary for survival when we’re young, but we then continue to function in that same reasoning. We look at the world through historical eyes and base our decisions on, what is now, irrelevant logic.

I think of it this way: a small child whose parents are unable to care for him because they are high on drugs all the time might get lost in watching television as a means of escape, for instance, because to face what’s actually going on in his life will simply annihilate him. (I should add here that this was not my life – Mom, Dad, don’t read too much into this post). But things that will annihilate us when we’re young and vulnerable will not take us down when we’re adults.  It won’t annihilate us to feel things.  And we can’t keep running away from having to feel things, or keep making our decisions based on input seen through historical eyes. It’s like trying to navigate New York with a map of Chicago.

As I was planting the grapes near the swing set, I noticed a lot of weeds crowding out the lavender nearby, and it occurred to me that I should pull them all out, lighten the area a bit and give the baby plants a chance to thrive.  Last summer I started out well, but when we left for two weeks and came back to a veritable jungle, I gave up on myself, on change, on life – oh sorry – where was I?  I gave up on trying to pull up all the weeds.

In Spring these weeds look pretty and delicate, harmless.

But when they grow, their stems take on a rubbery algae-like consistency and they spread low to the ground, hugging it and snaking around every living thing. As I pulled them out today, I was surprised to see how easily they came up because that was not the case last summer.  I had let them grow too big and had to get a spade out in order to dig out the root – pernicious little things that they are.  It occurred to me that I had better pull them out while they’re small with fragile roots instead of waiting until they were entrenched.

Before I knew it, I had filled the whole wheelbarrow.

The life lesson was not lost on me.

Here I am trying to change my character and having only partial success at facing the emptiness.  Sometimes I can challenge my thoughts and direct my mind from a point of strength.  At other times I don’t even want to try.  (Why feel an uncomfortable emptiness when I can fill it?  With something tangible like food?)  I alternate between feeling like I’m hollow from my core right through to my fingers and toes, and feeling as raw as a turtle without a shell.  No wonder I want to run.

In one of my more successful endeavors at directing my thoughts, I pictured the gnawing worry in my mind like a worm with teeth wrapped around my brain and gnawing away at my frontal lobe. And I pulled the sucker out, all the way down to its spidery tendrils coiled around my thoughts.  It was very freeing.

Well for me anyway.  You might still be retching from the imagery.

So I’m just trying to feel things instead of run from them and grow up a bit. And I think that’s pretty much what the book is about: learning to engage in the act of living.

And stopping to smell these.

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