Year After Year.
One year ago I started growing two avocado plants and today one of them has taught me a new lesson.
It was mostly a small epiphany but I like the idea of a plant taking all the credit. I have two plants now, one is called Avoh and the one Khado. I also had Guack and Amole but they both died.
Once avocado plants sprout the grow very fast, slender and tall, but you’re supposed to trim them a couple of times, so they will sprout again and get stronger.
Well, much like Avoh and Khado I too have been trimmed a couple of times. Sometimes by others, sometimes by me.
I have been running away for a while.
Moving to the United States, New York much less, gave me such freedom, and back then I didn’t even know such feeling was possible. Sometimes I look back and I cringe, then fear, for who I might have become If I never left. Maybe another gay guy in a beige ribbed sweater, mocking femininity, subconsciously imploring society to accept the gay version of a straight man that they have created, for themselves.
Two years ago I secretly vowed to never go back, never go back to those people that have never admired me or loved me for who I was, but rather what I had, sounded or looked like. But can I blame them? What was I putting out there myself?
Anyhow, I thought I had gotten away with “it”.
“Done” I thought, easy. But you can’t ever run away from anything, because unless you have anything physical chasing you whatever you’re running from has nothing to do with the outside. Also, breaking news, much like you, other people have lives too and way better things to do than focus on yours. That is a great lesson that my brain has learned many years ago. I’m still waiting for my stomach to get it though.
Year after year I thought I solved the problem, but I didn’t. I hadn’t even put a patch on it, I was just looking the other way.
I ran away from a lot. People who hurt me, people who mocked me, people who undermined me, people that did all of that and then forgot me. That feeling doesn’t just fade like the smoke of their cigarettes, and even though I know life will get to them, just like that smoke, that sense of closure still doesn’t provide any actual feeling, of closure. And when you hate your past, intensely enough that it affects your present, what to do? Just like I enjoy all my furniture aligned I also wish my life was aligned, but just like furniture moves around as you live in that space, so does life as you get through your days. I also wish that the stems of my plants were aligned and straight, but they aren’t, because every time I trimmed them, instead of growing a new sprout out of the cut, each plant grew a new stem out of one side.
Are my avocados plants a great metaphor of life?
Year after year I’ve been staring at the spot where I got trimmed, metaphorically. I have been stuck, standing over where everything ended, waiting for a miracle, waiting for a new beginning to grow out of a dry, dead end. Maybe the solution is not as poetic as mythology suggests, maybe we’re not bound to rise from our ashes like they say but rather embrace change, and try again, starting from a new place, heading somewhere new. And much like my avocado plants I will still be standing on the same ground. Same roots, imperfect body, but now lead by a newfound sense of adventurous, reckless, tenacious and creative optimism. Starting over each time from a different side. Just like my plants. Year after year.