Reclusive

I’ve spent the last week being kind of reclusive. Well, I guess maybe reclusive isn’t the appropriate word, but I’ve just been laying low. I didn’t necessarily mean to be so introverted over the last week, but something told me to pull all my feelers in and just hang at home with John for the time being. I wasn’t moping in my room with the lights off and sad songs on the radio or anything, I just didn’t feel like being out and about much.

On Friday John and I went out to breakfast and then hit up Wal-Mart, which made me remember exactly why it is that I didn’t want to go out in the first place. Wal-Mart has to be one of the most difficult places to walk into and out of with a smile on your face. There’s just too many people, too many crying babies, and the lines, my goodness, I don’t understand how there can be so many people checking out all at the same time.

We made our Wal-Mart excursion because I had said something about wanting to buy a planter and a couple of flowers to plant outside on our porch, so, John being the good sport that he is walked through the Hell Hole known as Wal-Mart with me. We managed to find the pot that I was looking for, but the flower selection was minimal… So, rather than John telling me that we’d go home and I could go out to this other nursery I had been eyeing for a long time, but had yet to work up the nerve to walk through the door—John looked over at me and said, “Let’s go to that nursery together, I like seeing you happy and I know that this is something that you love to do.”

I could have cried, I love plant shopping, and my past has been peppered with insults from my ex every time I wanted to step foot in a nursery. John not only walked through the doors with me, but enthusiastically helped me pick out some beautiful planters, and made a list of things that we eventually needed to come back for. I couldn’t believe my luck, I was actually walking around this gorgeous nursery with the man of my dreams and he was pointing out the same things that I was looking at saying, “We need to buy this, we’re going to get this today…”

That Friday was perfect… We got back to the house; I planted my lavender and succulents, and played with the puppies outside in the gorgeous sun. Something about gardening is truly therapeutic (possibly more so than writing?), and I felt my mood elevating as the potting soil temporarily stained my fingertips and accumulated under my nails.

My mom used to make me garden with her on Sunday afternoons when I was younger, and I could not have begrudged any activity more than I did those sunny Sundays spent pulling weeds. One Sunday when I found myself out in the back yard stooped over pulling weeds, I related some trouble that I had been having with a particularly obnoxious girl in my class. My mom offered me a tool very similar to the ever famous hitting a pillow with a tennis racquet routine—“Why don’t you imagine that the weeds are the heads of people you’re angry with, and you just pull them right out of the ground and toss them away.” Yes I know, rather morbid, and it sounds awful, but boy did it work.

My Sunday’s following this anger management breakthrough actually became days that I began to enjoy, and at times look forward to. I sometimes would even find myself out in the yard weeding a patch of garden simply because I needed to think about something. My mother gave me the gift of gardening as therapy and I still use it to this day.

John jokes every now and again when there’s a larger weed in the yard that needs to be pulled… Something like, “Damn I guess I’m going to have to get you good and mad soon, so that you’ll go rip that sucker outta the ground.” Will come rolling off of his tongue. He patently accepts my un-orthodox methods of coping with things, and sometimes will sit outside with me in the sun while I weed a flower patch, just so I have someone to keep me company while I think.

I found it rather insightful that John was so aware of my weeding for therapy tendencies… And when I asked him about his knowledge of my coping strategies he mentioned that around winter time when it gets cold, my strategies skip from being outward bound to deep cleaning a room in the house. He knows just how angry or upset I am by how many weeds are in the garden, and how clean the bathrooms or hall closets are. This being able to read me like a book stuff is kind of scary in a way, fortunately for me, he has yet to use it against me in any form, in fact, he rarely comments on the behavior when it’s happening.