How Does My Garden Grow? Well, I Sort Of Need To Weed It First...

Believe it or not, the image on this post is where I plan to put my vegetable garden this year. I want to grow corn, beans, and squash again, also known as the three sisters. I've gotten to be very interested in companion gardening. I want to learn more, but mostly I haven't gotten there yet.

And before you say "I don't think you can do it..." I should probably tell you that is a before picture. I was working in that area again today and while I don't think I am doing more before Tuesday at the soonest, I have made some significant progress. I expect I'll be able to do the rest between next Tuesday and next Thursday.

In the interest of full disclosure, about 1/3 of that clear patch is where the pile of debris in the upper right corner used to be, but the rest of it was me, a pair of gardening gloves, and the folding stool on the left side of the image. The debris is destined for a large trash pickup someday, but I am actually still finding things in there. It was almost completely lumber with a few random metal stakes and a metal tube thrown in for flavor.

If you're looking at that and thinking "How are you doing that when you are in so much pain all the time?" well you see, the thing is...

Painfully. I am certain it will be worth it, but also owwwwww. Also, very, very slowly. I am in a lot of pain doing this. A lot of pain, I've literally been in a chronic fatigue flare because of this and other, likely unrelated factors.

(at least I don't think almost the entire left side of my body having a tantrum is related)

All that debris took me about two months to move. The weeds are mostly easier. There's a trick to weeding this soil and I am very much employing it. The trick is to get the dirt wet first and I am looking at it as both "hey, the weeding is easier!" and "hey, the soil won't be so dry when I'm ready to put plants in it!"

"Why are you doing all that if it is literally causing you pain?" you might ask.

... this is one I don't know how to explain, most of the time. At least not without making people somewhat sad. The easier answer is "I love gardening, it makes me happy. I don't mind some pain for that." But there's a longer, more complicated answer contained behind that. Let me see if I can explain.

I've been in pain most of my life. The last time I had a day without pain was somewhere around October 9th, 2002. I was barely fourteen at the time. This October, it will have been twenty four years. Pain was with me during the last years of my adolescence, during my young adulthood, during nearly 2/3 of my entire life. In 2030, it will be 2/3 of my life. I don't expect I will ever have a day I do not hurt ever again in my life. I fought that for a very long time, but more recently I've been changing my mindset about it.

When pain does not get better, when it is something that just exists forever, you cannot fight it. It is a part of you now and when you fight yourself, you lose no matter which part of you wins. It is bad for your mental and physical health. Nor can you ignore the pain because pain is a necessary sensation for a reason. It teaches us not to touch the stove, it teaches us to be careful how we handle knives, it teaches us not to trust people who hurt us. It tells us when we need help because something is wrong, from a sprained ankle to a brain aneurysm.

When you cannot fight pain, cannot ignore pain, have no choice but to live with pain, there is only one option left; acceptance. You can accept the pain as a part of life. Still listen to it, still live your life despite or with it, and accept that it is going to be with you like a wart that contains the remains of an absorbed twin.

There is a grieving process in learning to live with pain. You want to deny that it will always be there at first. You try looking for a cure, willing to take any bargain that will just. make. it. stop. You get angry too, at yourself, at what caused it, sometimes at the nearest target because you're just tired and your emotional control slips. You hate the pain, you hate everything that makes it worse, you hate that it's always there and will never leave you. Sometimes, you hate yourself for being so weak, even though it's not your fault and you are trying your best.

You get depressed. You get depressed and you stay there and it is a struggle to find your way out of that one. I know a lot of people don't ever find their way. Some of them choose to find their own way to end it and I don't blame them. It is... a temptation, on my darker days. Not one I am willing to entertain, not one I am ever willing to indulge at this time, but I won't say it doesn't exist in me. During the worst days of the brain bleed, I had a plan if things got worse. I didn't know what to do, my doctors didn't know what to do, and that entire existence was hell.

... there was a lot that happened in there that didn't help as well. I don't want to get into it here, maybe another post, but it was... a lot. Nearly too much.

When I finally started to recover, almost a year later, I recognized that everything I had just somehow lived through was going to cause mental health problems and I needed to be proactive about it beyond the therapy I was already doing. I needed to remember there are things in this world I love. I needed to remember there is more to life than pain and misery. I needed to remember that despite what I had been told, there is worth in my existence even when all I can do is lay down and try to continue to breathe.

In that, I found my way to acceptance of my pain. I stopped fighting it. I started to listen to it, to learn from it, and to be one with it. I spent a lot of time alone, learning how to rest, unable to do anything but think. And when you think about your pain and how to find joy at the same time... you learn to accept the pain.

I have limits. We all do, but mine are pretty restricting by comparison to a healthy person. I would have been out there weeding all morning if I'd had a choice, but I did about 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there, for an hour and a half. There were rest periods. I probably only did about 40 minutes of weeding altogether, since I switched to hauling tumbleweeds at one point to give my nerve damaged wrist a break.

Pain has taught me where my limits are and how to find them and, more importantly, how to listen to them.

What I am doing now is negotiating with the pain. I worked in the garden today, yes, and I'm already sore. Tomorrow, I will not be out there, except maybe to water the area I'm weeding and probably the front yard. My nephew and I are going to a coffee shop instead so he can do homework and I can get some writing done. When my body stops yelling at me about all the work I did, I will give it one more day (I have had to learn this about EDS... I need more time to physically recover than I think.) and then I will go and do it again. By April, hypothetically, I will have seeds in the ground.

Pain is like weeds. You do not plant a garden and expect to magically not have weeds. The weeds will grow and you will deal with them when they come. Sometimes they kind of take over a bit, like the weeds in this area of the yard have, but if you're willing to be patient and take it one day at a time, one moment of energy and determination at a time...

Neither the pain nor the weeds can keep you from doing what you want to, need to do.

And sometimes, weeds and pain are both important indicators. This soil I'm planting in has been lifeless for a long time. The weeds running rampant tell me that this is the year to plant here. This soil has enough nutrition and life in it now that things can grow. The pain that I am feeling in many parts of my body right now tell me that old wounds are finding new ways to heal and change and become something else. Ideally, that will be something that hurts less, or maybe not at all!

(Let me dream.)

I am weeding the yard. I am healing the pain in my body. And while the yard will still have weeds and my body will always have pain... That's okay. I will mitigate both to a point where I can live with them and still see the joy of the work I have put into it.

One day at a time.