The spring before last, I built raised beds just in time to realize latex allergies can come in the shape of food (tomatoes! avocados! bananas! I was eating all three daily for months).
The beds sat largely empty for a year, save for the dirt I traded a random dirt man on craigslist a massage for and a couple carrots. I did not spend enough time with tomatoes. I did not have long enough to love them. I Kubler Rossed that shit, the full spectrum. Maybe this isn't, it can't be real. I felt betrayed by my own body, how could it do this? (On a long enough timeline, all of our bodies betray us. It is just what they do. It is the very last thing, for sure, but some far more, for far longer. Surely longer and harder than mine, I've been lucky). What if I just eat small amounts? Is there some way I can, I don't know (except I do know) steep bananas in rum for long enough to break down the naturally occurring latex proteins and then roast them to 258 degrees exactly and THEN make banana pudding, for instance? I'm a chef who has spent precious time devoted to working with other people's diets. I'm the girl. Maybe I'm my girl. I mourned. I was still drinking, I drank. I quit drinking (I'm now over the year and a half mark).
Last spring, I finally decided I know how to make smoothies without bananas, so I started making them. I decided I can grow countless other things that aren't things I can't eat, so I started growing them. My cat watched me attentively. I believe she wanted to know what I could possibly be doing. Every day, attending to the dirt.
At the same time, I was receiving love. It was the first time in a very long time. I think about the time I've spent here- what I had for years here was not love. It was the opposite of love. Before that, traveling for two years. I started counting backwards- I've been effectively single for twelve years. Have I ever really truly been loved, though? I was sure the answer was no. I had to start asking, ya know, what the fuck even is love.
I spent a few years healing from what I experienced here. It was hard and it was ugly. One of the things that happen when you quit drinking is suddenly you have no where to hide. It is just you and your fucking feelings. There is no escaping them, no staving them off. Just you, your fucking feelings, and no choice but to move through them. Little by little, I started feeling better. Little by little, I started loving myself, truly loving myself. I started cultivating my inner world. Started caring for myself, nurturing myself, challenging myself to grow. I started planting. A seed is unlocked potential, dormant until the conditions are supportive for growth.
You cannot trust anyone else if you do not trust yourself. I don't think putting it this way gets my point across, I think it's something you have to just get to get, believe me I've tried. You have to trust yourself to protect you. To make choices that will keep you safe. To remove yourself from situations that are harmful, if you are able (this is not a foolproof plan. There are people who can hurt you quickly. Barring something too dangerous, too abrupt), as long as you show up for yourself and trust yourself to make the right choices, the people you keep around should be people you can trust. If they aren't, it takes being honest with yourself the second you see it. Brick by brick, ya know, you take down the wall you built around yourself. Did you build it? Did we? How did I get in here?
I took it down as best as I could alone. Finally, it was time to grow in ways that can only be done with other people. It was a slow, deliberate process. I let someone in. At first, I'd spend a couple days slipping into a STATE. It took me a little while to realize I was dissociating. I had to remind myself: he isn't the one who hurt me. We just had sweet, tender intimacy. He is not the one who hurt me. I am okay. I am safe. If he does hurt me, I can keep myself safe. I am strong enough to get my feelings hurt. I am strong enough to say that is all I'll allow. If the time comes.
Meanwhile, my seedlings grew and grew. Finally, my cat realized things were appearing where I'd been digging around. And then the plants were attracting other creatures. It became her full-time job to watch over my vegetables. She murdered a squirrel for me. It was dead right beside a blueberry bush.
One of the things I had to relearn was how to have hard conversations. I've learned I am, to this day, petrified to try to have them in person. We'd have them on the phone. I learned I am actually really fucking good at hard conversations. I am loving, and careful, and gentle, but honest. I have a vested interest in transparency, in being forthcoming. If the person I'm having hard conversations is capable of that, we can talk about anything. I thought it was just this particular equation- two smart, funny people capable of artfully weaving in and out of the deep and the laughter. According to him, it was just me coaxing, fuck probably forcing him. Let's talk about our feelings.
I never did do it in person. On the list of things I can clearly see that I still grapple with and may never get over but try to acknowledge and make little steps forward on is this inability to have hard conversations in person. I can just walk out, if he starts screaming at me. I can just walk out, if he starts calling me names. That isn't the worst that could happen. It is what I'm mostly afraid of. I can protect myself. I do not think this is a person who will do that. I do not give him a chance. On the phone, I learn that I am capable of having the conversations, that there are men who are. We practice it, I've got sea legs. Something happens that I don't want for myself, I decide to trust myself, we have the hardest conversation about that, my plants continue to grow.
I let the christmas lima beans dry out on the stalks. I think the first harvest was in August, just after we broke up, it was all love. I intended to save them for new years hoppin' john. It had been so long, trying to find someone I wanted to spend time with. I did the math. Looks like I'll be eating these beans alone. Another three years or what?
There was a night, in 2015, where my ex and I were hooking up (it was an off period). I insisted on condoms, he insisted he wasn't going to do that. I fucking hated how he had such disrespect for my body. I hit him. He was twice my size and much stronger. We are in his bedroom, on his bed. I am on the floor in the livingroom, staring up at him. I did not recognize the man behind the eyes. He looked almost excited. I do not remember what he yelled directly in my face, stooping over my stunned body that had hit the doorframe on both sides, crashing should first into the floor. I don't remember what he yelled, but I remember the look on his face. I crawled into a little ball in his bed, sobbing.
It would take me several years to remember the other side: we woke up. We had sex without a condom. I never asked him to wear one again. I had ac joint separation. I quit my job because I physically could not do it. I started getting this nerve pain in my elbow, couldn't set it on anything without a little electric shock. We keep dating. All he ever says about it, with a fucking smile, is "yeah, I was being a little shit". A SMILE.
He doesn't harm me physically again. Not really. Sexually yes. He doesn't have to. That one act of violence was enough for me to be afraid enough of him.
To this day, I get that elbow nerve pain. Getting massage keeps it at bay. Something snapped in my wrist, violently, during a massage. The nerve pain was back, full force. The area that something snapped in my wrist, the ulnar nerve goes right through there. Suddenly, my life did a 180. Out on work comp, I decided to go back to school. I had time to date. I had time to go to the gym. Couldn't lift almost anything, but ya girl is up to 300lb leg presses.
Saw this man I like liked. Like like liked. I am not sexually attracted to people on purely physical levels at all. Almost ever. When I am, I just fucking avoid them.
Decided that was turning out to be weird, uncomfortable, perhaps even noticeable to him, so I stopped avoiding him. A spark. Another spark. I saw him out dancing. We danced near each other for hours, without paying much attention to each other. I made a mutual friend give him my number, thinking he wouldn't text me. He did later the same day. We started texting heavily. We finally hung out. We started a trade. He makes sourdough breads with complex flavors, with these perfect hands that are so intentional in everything they do. Every week, a loaf of sourdough for something. It's always different. First, I made a gateaux basque. Second, some browned butter, toasted sugar, earl gray, black cardamom, almond short bread cookies with an earl gray and black cardamom dipping glaze (his very specific request). Occasionally, he slips in a special other treat. I make mascarpone and bay leaf ice cream with a frozen local peach compote. Angel food cake, whipped cream, browned butter orange curd.
It's christmas. I go home to see my mom for probably the last time. To be with my mom and my siblings. I take this fucking loaf of bread that I got the same day I boarded the plane, cut it into smaller chunks, and take it with me. I feel my friends back home, over cribbage. I serve it with the family potato soup.
We share hoppin' john with christmas lima beans on new years day. I cannot fathom sharing them with anyone else. I spent all that time, months and months, laboring over, patiently waiting on, and preparing for this special moment, with this special person. Genuinely. I can't fathom sharing them with a single other soul. I grew these for us, I think.
At some point, we started holding each other. All night. We're staring into each other's eyes and holding hands and he's going down on me for hours at a time, just relentlessly. I am so thankful he can't hear my inner dialogue. I'd have proposed fifty times. I'd have told him I love him, I love him, I love him. I start imagining the trail of women he's left both broken hearted, like how am I supposed to go back out there, and yet aware that more exists. I am convinced he has been healing me sexually, slowly, patiently undoing years of men just wanting to take from me. My orgasms have gotten deeper and deeper. They've gotten longer and harder. I feel like he is putting something back, something I may have never had. I can't remember. I've never had this. At least one time, I have actually had a religious experience. Speaking in tongues, ya know, I get love. I am so glad he can't hear my inner thoughts. At some point, I just say: I get it.
Also, he is truly the most beautiful man I have ever seen naked. Underneath the bowtie is every muscle. He's between my legs and I'm musing: how the fuck did I coerce this man into taking care of me so completely? How.
I serve him, too, though. Three times in one night, two more the next. He's like: I can count on one hand, or I could. One night, I crawl out of bed after he spends an hour on me. He's standing in my bedroom floor. I want it to feel like an act of service, I want it to feel like a gift. I get on my knees, and I please him. Later, he tells me he was worried it might be hard to stand and remain balanced, but the longer it went on, the stronger he felt. He start growing roots in the middle of my bedroom. He became a tree. His limbs grew longer and longer. He started wondering if I'd water him, would I care for him, would I moisturize him so he doesn't get ashy. That is what he shared with me. He must be so glad I can't hear his thoughts.
He took a bath at my place. Put oatmeal, buttermilk, honey, lavender, and cinnamon in the water. Another loaf of bread, an "I would drink your bathwater" ice cream. He took my chef roll home to sharpen the knives, he hid cookies in the chef roll when he gave it back. There's soups. So many soups. He starts only eating sugar once a week, so I adapt and start making desserts with dates as the sweetener. One week, it's a raw vegan carrot cake with a thick layer of cashew cream. Another, some local purple japanese sweet potatoes into the ugliest whipped cream stuff mochis. We both start school, and suddenly instead of just this sweet food trade, we're caring for and nourishing each other through our semesters. He starts giving me beans, he gives me kraut he made. I start making extra juice. This has been going on for months now.
It's like, ya know, I showed up to the first date with the last guy I dated with a mayonnaise cheesecake with a browned butter, frosted flake, and walnut crust based on a memory of the weirdest thing he ever ate. I couldn't stop thinking about the challenge. It was his birthday a couple days before. I didn't tell the restaurant that but they still played a polka happy birthday while bringing it out. Something I'm proud of: I decided to be fearless. I decided to love the way I'd like to love and not consider it a loss if it didn't get returned to me. When it didn't, I decided I'd like more. Cut my losses, brushed off the dirt, and felt proud of myself for leading with love. And then this mf just appears, loving me in the ways that I love, in some ways harder.
The universe appreciates an expression of boundaries. It's like the universe puts it's proverbial hands up and says "that's all you had to say, say no more bestie". Hard to believe in the good intentions of a universe that makes everyone figure out how to demand, why can't it just be good to all of us.
I feel like I've seen enough to know that I'm on the right journey. That what is for me will find me. Faith is a two way street. You promise to show up for me if I promise to show up for me. I don't get it, but I can trust it. I can trust it because I trust me.
The times I feel anxious, I go and dig in the dirt. Don't have answers? Dig in the dirt. Anxiety about the future? Practice patience, in the dirt. It is an act of faith to garden, too.
If I put in the work, I can trust that what is meant for me will find me. I no longer have to worry about making things that don't fit fit. It's that simple.
