Beautiful Scary Day

I should not be afraid. It's a beautiful day and I have no reason to think I'm going to drop dead in the next 30 seconds. Yet that is always on my mind. You can't know what your body is going to door when or how it's going to do it.

It puzzles me that I'm so afraid of dying and yet somewhat suicidal at the same time. I think sometimes that being afraid of dying is what keeps me from suicide, really. If I had any faith that it would end the pain or change anything, maybe...but I actually think dying would be a bad thing, a bad choice, as it were. It's not so much that I believe in Hell--I don't; I had my Hell on earth for many many years--but my one near death experience was not filled with white light and welcoming presences and reassurance. It was nasty. I don't want to go back there.

But that's not what I meant to write about.

I meant to write about what a beautiful day it is. The sun is shining and the birds are singing. I have the windows open and I can see that the plum tree outside my office is about to bloom. People are going by in shorts and short-sleeved shirts.

In years past on a day like today I'd be out playing in the dirt: weeding, digging, picking up the detritus of winter, getting ready for this year's garden. This year, and for three years running, looking out my window at the garden just fills me with dread. It's another thing I used to enjoy that I just don't enjoy anymore. It's hard and cruel and the hardness and cruelness overshadows what I get out of it--if in fact I get anything out of it at all. Vegetables, yes. I like the fresh vegetables. But one can get those at the Farmers' Market.

The truth it, it just became too much work. Too much work that I had to do all my myself. I had kind of thought that the garden, or at least parts of it, could be something M. and I could share. He did not feel the same way. We didn't communicate well about it. And so it was considered my project, which wasn't what I wanted at all.

Then I got sick, first with gallbladder disease and then with this depression and everything went to pot. And every year it just seems to get worse and worse: messier and messier and more and more overgrown. I am ashamed because for a while there I had a really nice looking garden. Now it just looks like hell and I can't even care.

I have no answers. If I could, if I were infinitely wealthy, I would hire a landscaper to come and re-do the whole yard. But I don't have the resources for that. I can't even put up the privacy fence that I want--I think part of my dread stems from the fact that we live on a corner lot and I can't go into the back yard without some passer-by stopping to pass the time of day and comment on the work, when I just want to get on with it. I think if I had a privacy fence it would be better.

So my yard gets worse and worse and I get more and more guilty about it. Does not help.