The problem with being strong is that you get to a point when that's just what people expect of you. "If anyone can handle it, it's you"... "you're a tough bitch, you've got this"... "let me know if you need me..." And that last one—after 45 years of a hardened, "strong" mentality—is the one that kills you. I'm still learning how to ask for help.
People think I'm invincible. The support from the sidelines (social media) always feels like a circus sideshow to me. I feel like I'm being presented to a crowd from behind bars, "Is there anything she can't do?" says the man with a funny mustache, wearing a top hat, waving a gloved hand at me.
You don't need a support group, you need a garden.
On November 21st, 2020, I turned 40 and met my stepmother for the first time. She complimented me on all of my accolades, accomplishments, strength, and was in awe that I had the tenacity to reach out to my biological father—a stranger—to meet. It was at my kitchen table, on my first birthday in this house, that she followed all that praise up with a question: "Who supports you?" And she meant emotionally. Spiritually.
I was undone by that question. Sitting there, thinking... for too long. Of course my best friends, family, my team at work. But there was a line I never let anyone cross. I'd let people support me to their capacity, their convenience, their strength—and I would never ask for more. Never ask for help. Never let anyone truly see me struggle.
***
This morning was hard. My body has been giving up on me the last few months—beat up from moving my mom in, worn down by the heat, and inflamed in ways my doctor and I are still trying to explain. My hips and hands are arthritic. My knee wants to quit on me altogether. I stayed in bed until almost 10 a.m., had my coffee inside instead of walking the garden, and took my time venturing outside. At one point, I even considered spending my day in bed—a treat I haven't indulged in since it became not a treat but a daily ritual, until a new medication finally knocked my depression out of me.
I got sidetracked from my garden tasks today. A seemingly simple day of planting a few shrubs, a few seeds, and wrapping up some bed amending turned into a full day of me against myself. Ripping up patches of grass, creating another bed for some of my fall bulbs, carving a tiny creek from one bed to another for runoff, tamping some gravel... and lost, so lost, in my thoughts.
Because somewhere along the way, a dam I didn't even know I'd been holding started to leak. I'm not gardening, I'm processing. I'm working through the inner dialogue, trying to make sense of all the things I don't say out loud. I'm tired in a way that feels like I'll never recover, and I mean that emotionally and spiritually. Gardening has been this beautiful space in my mind where I am present, whole, and taking care of myself. A place where I'm putting myself before others, thinking about my needs, working through all of the questions I need answers to.
When I'm gardening, I'm saying no to dating. I'm choosing self over self-abandonment. When I'm out there, covered in dirt, no deodorant, skin breaking out—I am coming to terms with the fact that I may never get married again, and that the idea of a traditional family life is something I need to put to rest.
My house is massive. Two stories with a finished basement, a library addition, a spacious one-acre corner lot. When I bought this home, I had listed my old one and planned on summering at my boyfriend's lakeside rental. That summer had different plans for us. We found out his landlord needed to move into the rental just as I officially accepted an offer on my house.
After a few weeks of house shopping, I walked into this stately home as the sun beamed through the back door. It needed updating, but I had a vision and fell in love. I asked my boyfriend to officially move in with me. We spent that summer ripping out wallpaper room by room, tearing down walls, painting—and finding out I was pregnant.
It was July 2020. My eldest was 12, my youngest 7, and my boyfriend’s son was 8. It was the pandemic. He was going through a divorce. I was unsure of where our relationship was headed. Even though the previous year I had met with my midwife to discuss having a child on my own, I knew I couldn't keep this baby. I couldn't raise another child with shared custody, during uncertain times, at almost forty years old. So I chose to have an abortion. Saying it out loud—or rather, typing it—feels like one of the most vulnerable things I've ever admitted.
I had expected it to be worse, physically. I spent the day in bed, watching movies, sleeping on and off. I can't remember how the days that followed unfolded. It's amazing how we compartmentalize things—how neatly the mind can seal a box and carry it down to the basement.
We broke up that October. Emotionally, I was grieving my loss, my choice, while also discovering my biological father. I was at full mental capacity and didn't have room to nurture anything else.
For the year that followed, I "tried on" a few different relationships and dated casually. Two brief relationships—one with a closet drug addict, another with a man who was talking to girls inappropriately online. I went on a record twenty-minute date with a man who smoked pot with his 13-year-old and tried to convince me it was fine, that we could have different opinions on raising our children. I rounded out the year by falling head over heels for a man whose ex-wife begged for him back when she found out we were dating. He went back to her, because he was a good guy who wanted to do his best for their kids. That scenario jumpstarted my sobriety.
Every one of them made me a little quieter.
I took a breather from dating while getting sober. I revisited the choices I had made over the years, what felt broken inside me, what—and who—I wanted now that I was clean.
When I jumped back in with intention, it was more of the same. People who wanted to love me, but only if it was easy. People who loved having my name associated with theirs, but couldn't provide more than the bare minimum. Men who loved having a trophy—a beautiful, successful, independent, strong woman—who didn't need them. And who bailed when they realized I didn't need them, but wanted them. More of their time, more of their vulnerabilities, more of them.
My stepmother's question, it turns out, had already been answered by every one of them: no one supported me. Not really. Not past the line.
The last two heartbreaks included a failed engagement—maybe I'll discuss that another time—and a man I dated for about six months as summer ended and winter commenced. The latter did me in. My father died during that relationship, and he took such good care of me. Then he ended it one night, sitting in his car, in my driveway, one week after I'd had major surgery. Citing a list of violations, in a volume and tone that wasn't quite yelling but was so audibly angry that he wouldn't let me get a word in. And I just sat there and took every word for what seemed like an eternity, until he said it was over and made a remark about my kids. Then I simply got out of the car, went into my house, locked up, and started to cry. There wasn't a warning shot, no conversation that alluded to an end, nothing. It felt like a storm that came out of nowhere. There was no real follow-up either, besides angry, one-sided, relentless text messages and calls that ended only when I finally had to block him. I spent months tormented, and only got closure when I found out he had started dating someone else a week after he broke up with me—and it was a "serious" relationship.
As the snow melted this spring, I began to unpack: the full-house fantasy, the marriage dream, the possibility of a little girl, the sealed boxes in the basement of my mind. I sorted through every one, tossing what no longer served me, and found peace in the permanence of this house. One day I may live here alone—and that's okay. It's mine.
So I had my walkway redone, started a little pollinator garden, and have accepted that I may need Life Alert at some point—but I won't need a support group, because I have a garden.
Who supports you?
Six years later, I finally have an answer.