I Like Gardening

I have been doing something new and weird. I have been learning how to exist happily.

Before I had my daughter, I spent four years dealing with infertility and having miscarriages. I was in survival mode. Before that, I spent four years with significant chronic fatigue syndrome. It ended my life and my future as I had known it. I could not work. I could barely leave the house. I was in survival mode. Before that, I was a messy miserable uni student battling social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and depression. Survival mode. Before that I was a socially inept high school student with chronic insomnia and undiagnosed depression. Survival mode. Before that I was a bullied primary school student, too shy to function.

Survival mode. Survival mode all the way down.

Until I had my daughter.

It opened a new world, one that was magical and sunny and made of cuddles. Where I have the child I wanted desperately for so long. And I also have a husband and a house. I live somewhere I love. I have a job, sort of. I do business admin for my husband but also I make a not-insignificant amount selling my pattern designs.

It is … lovely.

And I don’t know how to live like this. I don’t understand this life. My entire process of existence, all my motivation and how I got anything done, was based on survival mode. I don’t know how to look after myself when life isn’t a crisis.   

Figuring it out has been a long, complicated process. One I didn’t fully realise I was going through until recently.

It started a bit over three years ago with baby cuddles. Becoming a well of unconditional love. Being so amazingly useful as nothing more than a place to nap.

I spent so many years trapped on a couch unable to move, and it was a pointless waste. To do it for good was incredibly healing.

It continued as I firmly defeated social anxiety. As my daughter grew, she was a busy, busy, busy baby. I needed to get her out and about, so I made mum friends. It was terrifying, but I did it anyway. Even with this secure base established, my kid would barge through other toddlers at kindergym and parks, so I had to talk to those parents too.

And I never wanted her to pick up on the fact it made me anxious. I never want her to feel like she, just going about her baby business, is somehow embarrassing or shameful or difficult for me. So I did it with a smile and faked being calm and cheerful and at ease until I fooled myself and wasn’t faking any more.

Then it was learning I had PTSD from all the miscarriage trauma and figuring out how to deal with that. This is a whole saga. Suffice to say, I’ve improved a lot, but whenever I think I’m through the worst, something tickles my trauma, and it gives me a good jump scare to remind me how deeply it’s wired into my brain.

Then it was learning more about my body and how to look after it properly.

My body, specifically.

We discovered I had chronic recurrent sinusitis from having naturally terrible sinuses. To fix it, I had surgery. I hurt my back badly from a combo of being very unfit, traumatised, and hypermobile (I am naturally a bendy pretzel and this is not a good thing because human bodies are not designed to function that bendy). To recover, I got stretches and a new awareness of how stress converts to physical tension. I ran into metabolism issues from my chronic-illness enforced sedentary lifestyle. To combat it, I was assigned strength training.

Change is distressing. The process of change, of any sort, even positive change, is the same process as grief. We have to let go of the old way of life and move into the new. It is not easy. We do not like to let go, even when we know letting go is good.

Right now, things are good, but I am chaos. I have no firm answers about myself. Everything is upheaval.

Slowly, patterns are emerging.

I like gardening. I do it in a low energy, fatigue friendly manner, but doing so has been worth it.

I am an artist. This may seem obvious to anyone who’s been following my comics for a while, but not to me.

I like writing by hand. I have been teaching myself real cursive, as I never learned it formally, and I now write everything in notebooks, even the stuff I need to type up later.

I am a hardcore homebody. The things I feel excited to do are reading, writing, gardening, sewing, knitting and drawing. I’m not supressing other more lofty or intense interests; I just don’t find them very interesting.

I want to look after myself. To find a balance with parenting. To get myself new clothes before everything I have is threadbare. To eat decent food and not just easy things out of packets. To be strong.

I might be able to figure out looking after myself if I try very hard.