Once at the hospital, she told the ER doctors that she wanted to die. She explained that she knew she needed help and that she had been asking God to take her out of the pain. Within an hour, a psychiatrist was at her side. Tall, with mousy brown hair and kind brown eyes, he looked like someone she’d be comfortable talking to. He said he could help. Giving in to therapy wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be, but would she be able to overcome her fear of rejection? Would she be able to grow past her juvenile infatuation and “being in love” with a narcissistic, foolish crack addict? The fight she experienced within herself during group therapy was foreign and upsetting. Her therapist asked her several different times if she was really ready to let go of him and move into recovery. Uncertainty choked her with a death grip. Sometimes she would say, “Yes, I can move on.” Then, other times, the sense of overwhelming fear would pull her back to the fetal position for a little more growth. She just wasn’t ready to be re-born yet.
Her days at the psych unit made her re-visit the hard days she endured. The last few years that had passed had been difficult. She mustered up the courage to share something that would help her to realize what she needed to do. Telling of her 2004 summer would be a turning point. They lived in a single-wide with two bedrooms, which was a pretty small place for four people and a dog, much less an added fifth person who was about ready to come into the world. For nearly three years that little trailer was their home. It held secrets of deception, rejection and infidelity in between the paper walls and, ironically, it also held a sort of sanctuary.
With zinnias bursting from their stems in the hot Texas sun and a young cottonwood tree stretching itself to see above the top of the house, she found great solace in the plants that blossomed. Who would have thought that the hitch could serve as a flower bed?! She planted and watered those bright baby blooms all by herself. Under the large pear tree she planted moss rose and caladiums, which thrived in the heat and humidity. The rocks she had gathered from road trips and along side the road leading up to the trailer park were some of her favorite possessions. The red ones came from the mountains of Oklahoma, and the clay ones from the rocky soil surrounding her home. She arranged them in a semi-circle around the tree and in a rectangle next to the cottonwood for her flowerbeds. Every day when she got home, before she went inside to greet the darkness that hid there, she would turn on the water-hose and spray the plants back to life since they had withered from the over-bearing sun. The quiet joy from her garden was about to be over.
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