After Winter-5.21.26

I left 4 years ago and I can still remember him laying there, he saw me stuffing a bag with clothes. I looked at him I froze for a moment in fear, he looked at me and if anything was said, it wasn’t memorable. The silence was memorable, it burned. Had he said something I may have stayed, I think he knew that and I think he knew as much as I knew, it was time to go. I would have just ended up leaving when he wasn’t there. The one good thing he did that year was not say a word when he saw me leaving, he knew I would not come back.

I escaped, I drove so fast and then I could barely move. Some nights I slept in the car with the heat on, some I tried to sleep in tents thinking I knew how to stay warm. I bought a tent a year earlier built for 6 thinking it would be my little home but now it’s just a place where I just politely disappear? My body heat was escaping into all the people not in the tent and I laid there alone, cold, afraid of dying, gasping for air and so, so cold, my god did I realize how alone I was. I thought of him warm, in the bed we chose together, maybe loving someone else by now, if he ever knew what love was.

I stood up and shouted “fuck this, I’m not dying for him” and went to the car, turned the heat on and slept so convicted. I’d left, I made it, it was my new life and it was time to power through and become the me I always dreamt of being, that was 3 and a half years ago.

Only now, finally in the safety of a home that’s been filled with generations of family am I starting to see pieces of myself. Today I planted the third round of seeds for this years garden, I’m on year 3. This spring is different. The first year was desperation and a mess, the second was semi put together and partially experimental and where I discovered a pure love for flower farming. This time it is planned to the row and I’m sitting in a humid greenhouse that I worked for, I can go inside and change clothes if I get too hot, I can take a shower if my hands get too muddy, I can also go to bed with dirty feet and nobody can say shit. I love and I hate that. I kinda wish somebody thought it was ridiculous and cute and held me tight despite the dirty feet. They understand, they don’t care, they just love me.

That’s what I see that I thought I’d never see again. Possibility. Every seed I plant is a reminder of possibility. They all need different conditions to grow, cold, wet, light, warm, dark, humid, freezing so many different journeys these seeds must take. I suppose no matter how the journey looks after the root of us is cut from the pulp of our lifeblood we can all take root in unfamiliar places and grow into something brand new. I can’t wait to see the blooms.