For most of my life, though it has been a relatively short one, I have hated summer. The light intensifies my headache problems, I have strong allergies to pollen, the weather is unpredictable, and the bugs seem to be drawn to me. However, within the past year or so, I have found solace in one summer activity.
Gardening.
It may sound odd for a sixteen year old girl, in such an advancing and stressful age of technology and introverts, to kneel outside for hours on end with my fingertips settled into the ground. However, I find something comforting in the silence of the natural, something tranquil about the simpleness of the task.
I work a retail job on Wednesdays and weekends so that I can own a car and so that I can buy seeds. I'm not a fan of potted plants, rather, I like to grow them from seedlings into majesties. I'd rather watch and facilitate the slow spread of their roots through the soil, tangling wildly amongst one another. They contain such an uncontainable finality, an unstoppable spread, however gradual it may be. I love to watch it.
I love the way that I can rip the life out of weeds on stressful days. I love the way that I am able to decide where such things grow, and where they do not. consequently, I love being able to look upon the still-growing garden, knowing that I have given it life, and knowing that it will never waste the opportunity. It is going to keep growing, and I am going to let it, like a mother with her child, until I die. The life of a plant, so unconscious and thoughtless, so relatable and so different than my own. What a life, I wonder sometimes.
There is something reassuring about the ability to ground my thoughts in the literal ground, to be able to think about my stressors and pretentious ideals while I repeat the motion of digging, rooting, watering, and spreading. As an introvert, I can always bury my thoughts and ideas with the seedlings, and I can watch them spread as personifications of my teenage emotions.
I love the way the soil cakes my hands with dark streaks and my forehead with clean sweat. I love how I can create something bigger than myself in ways that others will never understand. I love the way that I can share who I am, who I truly am, with the essence of nature, and not allow myself or others to put down a single one of my thoughts. I love solidity of the ground underneath my knees, my wrists, knowing that it can always be my tether to tranquility when I am on the edge of insanity.
With my usual cynicism, pessimism, and affirmation to the things that stress me out nonstop, it is easy to lose who I am. I run around, stressing myself out until I am confused and unsure of where my true passion lies. Too often, it is easy to lose time for thought, for peace, for pride. I can often forget what I truly think, what I truly believe in, when I am constantly anxious and honestly, a little bit too ready to give up on life. I love the way that I can forget that anything else matters while I a burying my anxiety and insecurity within the soil.
When I am sitting in my backyard, only noticing the passage of time once the sky begins to darken, it feels as if everything has stopped. I can release my inhibitions and my insecurities and my stress and just allow all of the negatives to turn into positives. I can breathe life into my emotions and later watch them grow into entities of nature-strong, hardy, beautiful.
I can find solace in such a life, such a task of creating it. I can find comfort in knowing that I can leave everything behind for a short while.
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