on chronic illness & the unnatural expectation of persistent bloom

** this piece is a response to @traumaandco ‘s chronic illness three week writing session:

day one

what if it wasn’t all in your head, but exquisitely and devastatingly alive and living deep in your bones?

—

count the rings of a tree and look at their width to see how many droughts it has survived. observe the number of spot dappled fawns born in a season to see how lush the forest is that season, how many the predators are. watch sunflowers turn towards each other instead to see if there is enough sunlight.

each day i live on this planet, i settle deeper into the truth that we are from it and of it. humans may have evolved too far — we think of ourselves as special, unique, separate from the rest of life. blame our pre-frontal cortex. blame that book that says we were given dominion. blame the ego. we have forgotten who and what we are.

born with an inherited, complex composition we are immediately enveloped by inherently complex conditions. like all life, we are matrices of these elements and environments.

each of us a miracle of specificity and singularity.

our bones too have rings. our offspring bear the weight of their birth season. we too must turn toward each other in absence of the light. no life is spared from the impact of its making, before and after its birth.

resist the urge to unnaturally bloom through the seasons of planting, harvesting, and dormancy. don’t believe those who would have you think the soil in which you grew would not shape the way you blossom. let your buds unfold as you see fit, in your own time. there will be pests, and rot, and hard freezes. see, nothing in nature is certain but change, but everything in nature labors for life, certainly.

dear earthling, there is so much struggle in life — let your nature be your nature.