I was planting some new garden beds today and I was going to do it right this time. I had the wooden markers. I had the pen. I was going to write down what was what and, this time, I was going to remember what I was growing and where the different plants were because I was going to be organized. I was going to follow the rules of good gardening as much as the thought made me want to puke.

I hated the idea. I hated the sticks, the pen, but in a confused way. I’d bought the sticks, happily, excitedly. I’d bought the pen. What I hated was the process, the A to B to C: plant the seeds, write the plant name on the stick and put it by the line of seeds, weeks later know what the green seedlings are because they are clearly marked. 

Even writing all that makes me a combination of furious and anxious. My elbows hurt. I want to cry. Fucking sticks. Stupid garden. 

There is a part of the brain that deals with something called executive function. I’m going to let the experts talk to you for a minute:

Executive function and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. Just as an air traffic control system at a busy airport safely manages the arrivals and departures of many aircraft on multiple runways, the brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses…

Children aren’t born with these skills—they are born with the potential to develop them. Some children may need more support than others to develop these skills. In other situations, if children do not get what they need from their relationships with adults and the conditions in their environments—or (worse) if those influences are sources of toxic stress—their skill development can be seriously delayed or impaired. Adverse environments resulting from neglect, abuse, and/or violence may expose children to toxic stress, which can disrupt brain architecture and impair the development of executive function. 

(https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/executive-function/)

Since a child being separated from his or her mother at or near (or not even all that near birth) isn’t generally seen as a violent act by most of society (if it is not violent, I ask, what is it?), I believe the damage done to the brain of the relinquished child is, on the whole, overlooked (not to mention the mother’s).

So here’s my thinking: I need to change my brain because I would do better with improved impulse control and the ability to plan and focus and mark the sticks in the garden accurately. 

(It’s all so complicated! Part of me is like: why bother to mark the sticks? What difference does naming something actually make? You were born and named something and then someone came around and whited out that first name and gave you another, so who’s to say that won’t happen with the sticks and the plants?!)

But I am a determined person. So here’s what I have come to understand about this process today: if someone were to say to fetal me in the womb, Hey! Want to change? Want to try not to get choked by that cord and want to go through a tunnel smaller than the size of your head? Want to get stuck with needles and have a sucker thing stuck up your nose? Chances are good I’d say, Nah. 

But then if the someone said, But if you stay, the space is going to get too small and you’re going to die.

I’d cry and be shocked and furious and finally say, Oh, fuck. Okay. 

That is sort of how I feel about the sticks. I don’t want to be organized. I don’t want to go A to B to C. But just because I don’t want to doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do, the most rewarding the to do. It’s like I’m a cat that has been patted tail to head my whole life and I’m freaking out when someone tries to smooth my fur head to tail, pat me in a way I was genetically created to be patted. I’ve become so used to being uncomfortable that I want to stay there.

I feel awful when someone tells me just to mark the plants in the garden. I feel sick. I feel like someone’s telling me to put two magnets together in my body that are repelling each other. No no no no no!

But these are my feelings, and they are in response, perhaps, to things that happened so long ago I don’t even consciously remember them—this is the essence of trauma brain. These feelings that became habitually in my body and brain are in response to grooved thoughts so old they aren’t even on the horizon. (Where is my mother, the missing part of me? Where is the breast? I am going to die. My body does not know these people.)

I am not marking plants because my body is saying NO to this life, this day, this hour. NO I will not follow the rules. NO I will not participate. This life is bullshit. 

I’m living with an infant’s tantrum somewhere in my brain, and it’s steering the ship of me. 

If I want to change, be more firmly rooted in my life, feel less anxious, more in control, I have to work at developing the part of my brain that helps me plan. I have to be willing to tolerate the birth canal of change, the discomfort and sickness of doing things differently. 

I did mark the sticks today. It feels like I lied just now when I wrote that, like the whole thing didn’t really happen. Like it was a dream. I couldn’t find the Sharpee so I used a regular ballpoint pen that will run in the rain. 

So, I guess I both marked the sticks and didn’t mark them.

Baby steps.