What I Really Meant Was

an essay inspired by Ross Gay

Around 2005, I would have told you that I wasn’t a plant person. What I really meant was that my brother had just died, and I was terrified at the prospect of having to keep something—anything—else alive. Though to be fair, I’d hated bouquets even before the funeral, the blooms cut off from their roots, petals browning and curling, sagging and dropping one by one to the surface of the table, until they were nothing but puckered stems in murky water. They would have died anyway, eventually. Everything does. Yes, I knew. I knew. And I wished I didn’t.

Around 2006, I would have told you that I wasn’t sure if I wanted children. What I really meant was that I wanted them desperately, but I could see how thin the strings were, now, that tethered us all to the living, breathing world, and I didn’t think I could bear it. So much so that when a friend gave me two calla lily bulbs I could scarcely breathe. I remember the screaming inside my chest, the urge to push them back into her hands. Instead, I bought a pot and pushed them deep into the dirt, set them on my small back balcony and waited.

The relief, oh god the relief when they finally bloomed.

Around 2007, I would have told you that I was trying something new. What I really meant was that I had a little courage, now. A little faith. A little hunger that was starting to outpace the fear. I bought window boxes and lashed them to the balcony railings. I planted vinca vines and lantana and petunias. I paid attention to the soil, and watered them when they started to wilt. I replaced the annuals every spring, and while the shriveled remains of last year’s plants made me a little sad, it helped knowing they’d lived as long as they were supposed to live.

Around 2013, I would have told you that I wasn’t afraid anymore. And it was what I really meant. I’d started practicing Buddhism and done the twelve steps. I was back on antidepressants. I’d had three surgeries, including a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, and a bout of gastroparesis so severe that I hadn’t been able to eat anything but coconut milk for months. I’d lost over twenty percent of my body weight, and I’d been pretty sure I was going to die. It had taken me two years to recover, and something had shifted in me. Now the thinness of the strings felt like possibility. If I was going to lose it all anyway, why not open my heart to every possible thing?

Around 2017, I would have told you that I had no idea what I was talking about before. What I really meant was that I thought my heart had cracked open as wide as it could, but I was wrong. I think this is what people are trying to say when they claim that you don’t know true love until you have children. What they really mean is that they’ve never felt so vulnerable, so absolutely and completely exposed. This is not the same thing as love. This is recognizing your helplessness in the face of the universe. It’s a shortcut to ego dissolution, like ripping off a cosmic bandaid.

Nowadays I would tell you that I don’t really consider myself a gardener. What I really mean is that I don’t know things about soil and sunlight. I don’t fertilize, and my mom does most of my weeding. I don’t carefully plan what grows where, or when, or how much. I scatter seeds and wait to see what happens. Nowadays I would tell you that sometimes the fragility of it all closes in on me just as tightly as it did two decades ago, maybe even more so, as my body behaves more and more like a body near its end. But what I really mean is that scattering seeds with no assurance, with faith and patience and acceptance, has been the best thing I’ve ever done.

And I really mean it.

This essay grew out of a prompt from Ross Gay’s newsletter Mondays Are Free. It was supposed to be a prose poem, which it isn’t, but I like how it turned out anyway. If you end up doing this exercise, please let me know! I’d love to see what you come up with. And if you don’t do it, tell me what seeds you’ve been scattering lately, and how your heart is holding up.