I Have Weeds

Weeds are like unresolved pain — they’re unsightly, ugly, and hard to get rid of. And they don’t belong on our beautiful lawns. (Hey, that rhymes.)

But when I look at yesterday’s photo of the weeds growing in my front yard, I don’t think they’re ugly at all. They’re very green with little yellow flowers and leaves with an interesting shape. It’d be nice if they were medicinal and smokeable… but I digress.

See, last year when the weeds popped up, the apartment manager hired people who doused everything with a very strong and toxic-smelling weed killer. Poison. You know, where all the dogs and kids play. That awful smell lasted for days… and all just to kill some weeds.

How much more expensive could it be to have someone pull them out by hand? However, considering the amount of dog poo in these areas (see bottom, right-hand corner), I’m beginning to think a little poison might just be the thing…

But back to the topic at hand, unresolved pain. Pain, like we experience when grieving, is not something to be resolved or made to disappear; it’s something we learn to manage and live with. When we lose someone we love, intense and acute pain is followed by moderate and mild pain. Eventually (and hopefully), the grief and pain reach levels we can live with. When a woman has a baby, really (really) intense pain is followed by moderate, mild, and hopefully, no pain. (Still, I did it once, and it’s not an experience I ever wanted to repeat.)

Our pain is like my weeds. Nobody wants to see our pain (or the weeds), including us. Weeds are like the ugly parts of ourselves that we’d rather keep hidden. They’re not the perfect pink of the trees that are now flowering, nor do they have the beauty of the tiny buds that are blooming. Weeds don’t smell like the white and yellow honeysuckle or the silk petals of a rose.

But weeds are strong. They’re stubborn. And they have a very strong will to live — my weeds were poisoned last year and yet came back strong this year. Mother Nature appears to be stronger than man-made poisons…

We treat pain with chemicals, just like the weeds. And maybe we should also think about pulling the weeds instead of just treating the resulting pain. I mean, it’s not like any of us are going to go through our whole lives without any weeds.

And yet… I think I’ll keep some of my weeds. They are a part of me, of my experiences, good and bad, and they don’t have to be pretty for me to claim them.

I am human. I have weeds. (And I love weed.) Deal with it. 😀