Here's Why I (And Likely You) Aren't Worth The Time & Effort

Every single plant I've ever owned has died.

To be fair, sometimes it's my fault. I'm just plain no good at ownership of something that doesn't require undivided attention, like a dog. I'll forget to water them, forget to give them sun, hell, sometimes I'll forget they're even there. I know, I know, I'm awful. I acknowledge this and apologize for it. But I think my failure in plant care also speaks to something deeper within me. My inability to care about things. I mean, I take care of my dogs. I feed them every day, I play with them, but...otherwise...I just don't really care about anything else. Not so much that I don't care, more so that I can't care. I seem to be genuinely incapable of doing so. Sure, I can muster up enthusiasm for friends, people I know online, and talk to them about their problems, but they don't really register to me on a day to day basis, only in the moment. I know I must sound like a heartless, sociopathic monster, and you're probably not wrong, but I can't help but wonder why this happened this way.

I have, like, the opposite of the Midas touch. Instead of turning things to gold they turn to dust. Decay. Filth. I'm like Medusa but nowhere near as cool, though certainly likely just as hated. Everything, not just plants, that I have a hand in eventually seems to wither and rot before my eyes. Friendships fall apart, relationships sour, and the only thing I ever have left is my blog. My work. But I'm sure one day I'll ruin that too.

I always do, don't I.

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I'm not proud of the following admissions, but I feel they need to be stated to justify my actions, whether they're justifiable or not. I'm ashamed to admit how many animals I've killed. Not on purpose, obviously, I love animals more than I love any people. But it continually happened, time and time again, growing up. I overfed fish, I let mice eat one another and I didn't know how to save the sweetest guinea pig I've ever known when he got suddenly sick (there was no time to take him to the vet, and I prefer not to discuss this any further as it's one of the hardest things I've ever gone through and don't speak of to this day). But, I also want to state that I have felt terrible about every single one of these things. I was a little girl, I didn't know what I was doing, or that I was doing anything wrong, and I would never hurt an animal on purpose. These were just things that naturally happened. I didn't know you could overfeed a fish, I was a kid and kids are stupid a lot of the time.

I want it made very clear, however, that while I do feel bad about these pets, and I do care about animals, I don't care about myself. This isn't an egotistical thing where I feel I'm better than everyone, because I sure as shit don't. Nobody treats me worse or thinks more poorly of me than I do. And maybe it's a learned behavior, stemming from all the teachers, peers, family members and supposed 'friends' who, over time, hated me too. Perhaps it's simply something I picked up from them and ran with. But this self deprecation isn't solely for comedic purposes. Oh sure, it makes me far more relatable because, let's face it, nobody likes someone with an ego. But it's deeper than that. It's incredibly sincere. My hatred, and moreso my downright disappointment in myself, is 100% sincere. I've never said anything about myself, positive or negative, that I don't absolutely believe to the nth degree. For example, and this is a rather positive statement which is unusual for me but I'm saying it to prove a point, I believe I am a somewhat genuinely competent writer, fictional or otherwise. Perhaps this is because I've spent the last 20 years honing my craft. But I ALSO, on the negative flipside, believe that I do not deserve to be read, because so much of my work is so personal it can't really be deeply comprehended the way I would like it to be because the people reading it haven't lived my life.

Also I'm not intelligent, I'm not that attractive and, between you and me random web trawler, I'm just overall not a very interesting person. All negative things, but I believe them with absolute conviction.

So maybe my lack of love for myself, or even lack of mere respect for myself, is why my health is so poor. Aside from simply being a mutant genetically, it might explain why I don't take better care of myself, because I don't think I deserve to feel good. Whereas with a plant, it's often that I simply forget about them, but with myself, I'm actively working to make myself worse. Every single plant I've ever had has died, and yet, despite how many terrible things I've done to myself, I'm still here.

Go figure.

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You know what I'm sick of? Not the whole 'positive' movement that the internet has glomed onto like a leech to a busted knee in a swamp, but moreso one particular aspect of said movement, and that's the one where people compare mental health to plants.

They say things like "You need to water yourself in order to grow" or "plant your seeds to watch your progress take root" or some super vague semi generic phrase like that that often equates your personal growth to thriving in dirt. I'm a human, not a fucking ficus. A plant and I don't really have much in common. In fact, I'd even go so far as to wager that a plant is more important than me, because unlike myself, a plant actually gives back to the world. It does things for others. It has a purpose for existing. I sure as shit don't. Lord knows I try and have purpose in the world, whether it's creating a myriad of work over the past 20 years that nobody gives two shits about, or simply being there for others while no one will be there for me. But in the end, all my sacrifices seem to be for naught, and really, that's the way it should go I think. I forget to give, I don't get to get. I can't take care of what keeps the world turning, plants, so why should the world care about me?

But my consciousness is not a plant that needs to be "watered" or "given sunlight" or "have pesticides sprayed on it" or whatever ridiculous metaphor you're deciding to use in regards to mental health this particular week. My mental health is just that, mental health. My brain isn't a willowing flower caught dehydrating inside dry soil. It's a mass of diseased dying tissue bobbing around inside my head like a rotten apple in a wooden bucket at an eighth graders shitty chaperoned Halloween party in the rec center. I don't need to "take root", I don't need to "water myself" and I sure as shit don't need to be "pruned" because that just sounds like it hurts. Really, a better way to have this work would be to use it as a metaphor towards other people. We should water other people, we should help them thrive and grow and make sure to put plenty of sunlight on them. We're so focused on ourselves as a species that we can't use our metaphors for taking care of others, they're always for taking care of us. Even self care is selfish, in many ways, because instead of caring for others, we're focusing on caring for ourselves. I'm not saying all self care is selfish, lord knows I myself partake in a good amount of it (removing myself from triggers, cutting toxic people out of my life, etc) but at the end of the day I want to care far more about those close to me than myself.

So why am I so unable to genuinely do so?

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I don't really deserve love, and perhaps that's why I don't nurture plants.

Because I don't deserve to be nurtured in that way. But I do at least believe, despite my hermit tendencies, that there are a few people out there who deserve to be, hence why I focus my efforts on them and not myself. Then again, I've only been proven time and time over the opposite, and that everyone only cares with an asterisk like a "terms and conditions" they don't care to read when they sign up for you. Seems to me everyone just sort of adds you to this list of arbitrary people they feel obligated to pretend to care about on a weekly basis, so they can check in now and then and then pat themselves on the back for feeling good about doing so. Nobody ever recognizes that caring about someone is either an all or nothing, and when they realize it's an all, they chose instead to give nothing, because - let's not lie - nothing is much easier. All that being said, you'd think I'd work harder at taking care of plants, because here's a thing that exists to bring you blooming flowers and lovely smells (if you're, unlike me, capable of smelling things) but up until now I haven't been able to make it a thing I really care about. Perhaps for once I'll actually have a genuine use for something as generally useless as "new years resolutions".

Why care for Phyllis when I can instead care for ficus?