An Odyssey in the Garden

I went out to cull the drooping sunflowers.

I want to grow an Autumn garden, to see if I can keep growing beautiful things until frost. But there’s hardly any room. I went to pull up weeds, and those summer squash that never gave me any squash, and the sunflowers that had already lost their petals and drooped over.

It hasn’t been a very good day, because it wasn’t a very good night. It wasn’t a very good night because yesterday was hard. It’s hard to be a person with religious trauma who writes about religious trauma. When you find out another shocking detail about the cult leader you knew so well, when your name gets dragged into it somehow,  when people are calling you “emotional” for writing candidly about spiritual abuse, it tickles your complex PTSD. I couldn’t fall asleep at night, even though I took Benadryl. I didn’t get to sleep until 5 AM when I gave up and gulped a cup of cold coffee and tried to do some writing. That was when I dozed off for a few hours, and woke up at eleven.

All I wanted was to go swimming or hiking to soothe myself, but I can’t. I’ve lost the entire summer. The pools will be closing this week so the lifeguards can get ready for high school sports. And we can’t even think about putting a down payment on a car until we’ve settled rent. Of course we don’t have rent. I’m finally doing new writing projects again after having colitis for two months and being too sick to accomplish anything, but they won’t pay until the end of this month or the beginning of next. Rent is due the fifteenth. I was starting to get out of the hole but I’ve ruined everything. I’m trapped.

I took out my anger on the crabgrass first, and then the dead squash, ripping out the roots of plants to reveal the wine-dark soil. And then I stopped for breath, because after the summer of sickness I’m completely out of shape and my muscles are gone. Even if I could go swimming, I’d probably drown.

The sunflower stalks were so thick, I couldn’t yank them out of the ground very well. I went in to get the hacksaw and cut them like trees.

Adrienne used the made-up word “psychodyssey” in conversation the other day, in the middle of a funny anecdote where she meant to say “psychopathy,” and it is my favorite neologism in the world. A psychodyssey. An oddness in the psyche. Better yet, an odyssey in the psyche. I am constantly on a psych-odyssey. I am constantly caught up in my own mind, having one fantastical misadventure after another in my head, just trying to get home. I was in a psychodyssey just then.

Where is home?

Home is where I feel safe. But how often do I feel safe?

I want to journey there, to the place in my mind where I feel at home, where I feel that I belong, where I feel like I’m a good person and God loves me. And on the way I am beset by monsters: the sirens, Polyphemus, Scylla and Charybdis. Their real names are a flashback, a panic attack, an autistic meltdown, an OCD spiral. Today it’s just that odd creepy feeling that I’m not okay. I’m not safe. I’ll never get to go hiking or to  the lake again. The terrible truth about Franciscan University will keep trickling out bit by bit forever, but that place will never be brought to justice. I’ve had so much bad luck because God cursed me so I could be a victim soul, or maybe it’s because God doesn’t love me, or maybe it’s because I have a demonic oppression. I got raped thirteen years ago because the Virgin Mary hates me and didn’t protect me. We’ve never found a place among the Catholics of Steubenville because many are called but few are chosen, and I wasn’t chosen and Jesus wants me in hell. Maybe I’ll be trapped forever in Steubenville because Calypso wants to keep me here forever. No, not Calypso. The Virgin Mary, that’s it. This is all the Virgin Mary’s fault.

The cyclopes stared at me with beguiling smiles. No, they weren’t the cyclopes. They were the pervert priests I’ve known, standing piously in a line, black cassocks tied off with knotted belts, sandals with black socks. When my mother dropped me off at Franciscan University for the first time, she laughed when she saw the friars. They all looked so pious and holy to her, but I’ll never think a Franciscan looks holy again. They will always look like monsters to me.

No, never mind, they weren’t cyclopes or Franciscans. They were just these sunflowers, the Mammoth Gray Stripes, each with one great big open center staring down at me.

The stalk of the thickest of the dead sunflowers finally broke under the rasping of the hacksaw. The plant bent over to the ground. The sap of a sunflower smells a bit like pine.

The smell reminded me of the woods I can’t get to, but it also brought me down to earth.

What a strange, bizarre juxtaposition. I am a Catholic, raised in the Charismatic Renewal which taught that pagans worship demons, and my mind is trying to explain my Catholic religious trauma to me using a pagan epic poem.

A literature professor once told me that the way I was taught to view the Virgin Mary sounds like a cult for the appeasement of Juno, and I think he was onto something.

My best friend right now is an actual pagan, a witch who lives in Columbus. She prays the Rosary before bed and loves the Virgin Mary more than anybody I know. She’s not scared of the Virgin Mary at all. She was surprised to hear that I, a Catholic, am afraid of Mary.

My mind swirled with all of this nonsense as I sat down to catch my breath.

I wanted to drag all the great big sunflowers I’d cut down to the porch to dry; I’d compost the stalks and use the heads as bird feeders. But I was so tired, I left them in the yard and went inside to bed.

Let’s say that I found my way back to Ithaca just then. Let’s say that I found the quiet place in my mind, where God is– not the gods, not the angry bogeyman of the Charismatic Renewal, just God. Let’s say we talked. And I wasn’t in a psychodyssey anymore. I was just myself. I felt hopeful. We’ll pull out of the rough patch somehow.

After awhile I got Adrienne, and we tidied up the yard. We used a tape measure to find the length of the very tallest sunflower– a little over ten feet. I’d thought it was taller. The sunflowers that were still blooming looked happy with more room to grow. The weak little sunflower seedlings might be able to catch up and fill in the gaps now. I’ll spread compost and plant beans and lettuce tomorrow.

The sun went down in the Appalachian sky, and a gentle darkness overtook the world.