The Trouble with Weeds

Our past can become building blocks, the seeds sown, both strong and weak on which our present blooms and from which our future will sprout. It's the pervasive weed colonies that invade each and are the cause for much tilling and fires as it were. The trouble with this theory is that we do not have control which pieces of our past are involved. For most of us, there are moments in our pasts, years for some of us, that we'd rather leave behind in the rubble, in the burned ashes of faulty harvests. But unwittingly, we carry them with us in packs of dynamite waiting to detonate that can potentially decimate the present we live in and prevent the future for which we long. If we feel "not good enough", well then, we have the proof on our backs to make us feel correct you see?

There are several moments when I feel strong, resilient, powerful, confident, content and dare I say, excited for my future. But as is typical every couple of weeks, the past I so wanted to bury in a concrete tomb comes creeping back in like an english ivy that just won't die. It's these moments when all the feelings of joy I once felt when I crept out of that dark and desolate cave of my past relationships disappear. Maybe they don't disappear they just devolve into pangs of worry, self deprecating thoughts that crush me to my core. I'm the first to say love is magical, I'm the first to say we should enjoy each day as a new one, anyone who knows me will say I give more than I actually have in reserves in an effort to make those around me smile without a single thought as to how I will replenish that surplus. But in that moment sitting in my dark place, the words he said, the feelings he/they made me brew all come back in a tornado of thoughts and emotions I cannot control. Its a violent and turbulent passage into my past, a lonely and dangerous place to be in. It's a vacant lot revisited by only me and sadly at times, it feels normal because it was all I'd ever known for so long. Almost as if it is something I can validate because I heard it for so long versus anything good about myself.

There's an odd comfort, morbid maybe, that you feel in that mode because you'd lived in it for so long that at one point it became normalized, safe and consistent. You begin to believe that is all you are. Two decades of people making you feel a certain way will definitely change the way you see yourself. And it takes an Odyssey type of effort to overcome it. But I'm not sure you ever overcome it, at least not fully. And those are the weeds.

I will always put your happiness first, your comfort, your peace-and all before my own because that is how I am, that is who I am. But in an unbalanced exchange there will always be those times that maybe I feel underappreciated or undervalued which in actuality is based on my own feelings of unworthiness and certainly having nothing to do you with you or your actions. This is the difficult part to explain to someone which is why it is so much easier to just be alone. My tough facade is confusing and lends to misunderstandings. But that wall I built up is two fold. It protects me from getting hurt and it protects you from having to deal with any of this.

I wish more than anything this were not the case, If I could take back the last 15 or so years, I would. Because it would mean I wouldn't be this way, with all this extra baggage, a lifetime of weeds, for which no one signed up. But that's not how it works. So I'll take every piece of it and try to make do with what I have left, but I just cannot guarantee it will be enough. I may never enough or maybe I'll be too much. But if I'm being honest, it's all I have and it's all I am, it's me. It's the weeds that creep up, resilient, foreboding and treacherous. That's the thing about the weeds, they are hard to contain and have a power mightier than most. Somehow the weeds may linger but hopefully beneath the newly sprung field of wildflowers under your sunshine.