Growing In New Direction

The only plants my family can keep alive are succulents and vines. They require little water and nurturing and lots of light, making them perfect for a busy family in drought-prone California. I have always felt a simultaneous love and resentment towards these vines that spilled over the fence in the backyard—they looked beautiful, but why couldn’t we be like a normal family with a neatly ordered garden that was properly tended and restricted to an elegant little plot? Rather, the vines followed no arrangement, and I had always seen the way they grew more as a kind of war. The ivy on the right side of the fence had the advantage of age and wisdom, having been there since we moved into the house, while the young potato vine threatened its place with its constant reach. The resilient wisteria, however, was staging a resurgence all the way on the left, and after years of dormancy it was finally entangling with the lemon tree as an invaluable, if unwilling, ally. The chayote looked opposite from the deck, using this structure as support, as it mounted an offense from afar. The backyard to me was in constant conflict, an unchecked growth that felt wrong compared to the quaint lattices of Berkeley gardens with their prim, gentle plushness.

In the past few months, I have come to think of these vines differently. After unexpectedly coming home from what was supposed to be my official “summer in St. Louis,” that elusive benchmark for Wash U students, they were a welcoming sight from the manicured lawns I used to be surrounded by all the time. They came to comfort me during what was the most painful summer of my life.

It was supposed to be perfect, not painful. Where I wanted last summer to be the last fling of my “youth,” this summer was supposed to be when I became an “adult.” Last year, I studied abroad for six weeks, walked my way around Madrid, worked as a camp counselor, and took a road trip up the West Coast to see my favorite band in concert (when you are planning to take a road trip you can also read about things to do in Gloucestershire as it can assure the greatest experience). I wanted to have a great time before I followed my classmates to internships and opportunities that would be invaluable to creating a stable career in a respectable field. And after all of my work sophomore year, it felt like I was finally on track; I landed a nice-sounding internship at City Hall that aligned with my public health interests, I was accepted into a fellowship from Wash U to cover the costs, and I got off-campus housing arrangements to finally secure an independence away from endlessly arranged university dorms.

[su_pullquote align=”right”]But this was just a summer of pretend. I only impersonated an adult. I commuted to work, appalled by the softly narrated atrocities on NPR that filled the car.[/su_pullquote]But this was just a summer of pretend. I only impersonated an adult. I commuted to work, appalled by the softly narrated atrocities on NPR that filled the car. I sat in a horribly mind-numbing internship from 9-4, saying things like, “I can’t believe the weather today!” and, “So glad it’s Friday!” in a sickeningly sweet voice to adults who did not know my name. The only consolation came from climbing, and I gave those plastic walls everything I had. I threw myself into the one sport where I could definitively see self-growth from week to week. It was fine that I was not getting anything from an eight-hour work day, that my routine was not saving me, because at least here I could set fixed goals and measure improvement according to a clear, graded scale. As I got stronger each week, I felt that I had to be reaching closer to my ideal self, that I had to be getting better, because I could not be suffering this summer for nothing. This desperation came to an abrupt end with a jarring crack one day when I was climbing and fell.

Later, with three bones broken and the morphine wearing off, I was drowning out of my body and out of time. The only logic that made sense to me was the pain that kept pulsing, “failure, failure, failure.” My broken bones were inextricably linked with my hands, empty of accomplishments. A “prestigious” internship and fellowship and a newfound sport vanished before my eyes, and I was sure that it was all because I had been too weak to dedicate myself fully, to hold on and not fall. I flew home in a perpetual drug-induced haze, the world fuzzy at the edges and all of my limbs heavy at once. The only thoughts that made sense were lists of everything I lost coming back to me like treasures washing up to a long-abandoned shore. Internship, fellowship, networks; running, driving, gardening; biking, skating, hiking; each list as balanced and rhythmic as waves, as the steps I could not take anymore.

The pain never subsided, and all I could focus on was the negative space this break created for me. But one day, as I sat at home listing off everything I had lost, my sister said to me, “No – this is only a setback if growth is linear. And it’s not.” That was all she left me with, and I kept turning her sentence over and over like I used to stroke rocks plucked from a river, touching the ragged edges and feeling for an ancient truth in it. For weeks I sat immobile in our house, only able to look into our backyard at those old vines again, and I repeated that sentence like a prayer or an incantation. It became a balm to a wound that no pain medication could touch because its roots were much deeper than broken bones. I stared out the window and all of the different greens of the backyard were calming now. I saw that those vines were not fighting for height or coverage but were, like me, simply trying to survive alongside anything in their path. Their growth is anything but linear; they climb and sprawl and weave, and in the case of darkness, they let some branches die while finding new places in which to find the sunlight.

Now, it is a bit terrifying to say that I want nothing more than to grow like those unruly vines. I do not have a set path for my life now or after graduation, and I do not want one. I do not know if there is a reassuring way to say that I do not have a four-year plan or a clear idea for my career or even set date for when I will be able to walk fully again. All I can say is that I am at peace with it, and I am learning to love rather than fear the questions that I am asking myself. Is it possible to have more indefinite goals rather than resume milestones?

[su_pullquote align=”right”]Striving for an imaginary perfection is not only painful but also distracts from the inherently chaotic and messy process that is self-actualization.[/su_pullquote]This semester, I would like to be more present, a better listener, and a more receptive friend, but I am an ambitious, driven person, and I am afraid that I cannot motivate myself without shame. Despite this fear, I know that this is all I can do because I am done with the ways I have done things in the past. I accept this unknowing because it is not that I cannot be the “perfect” Wash U student, but that I do not want to be. Striving for an imaginary perfection is not only painful but also distracts from the inherently chaotic and messy process that is self-actualization. I have had lists of achievements I wanted to attain for my whole life, but they have not made me a better person, a better sister or daughter or friend. The torturous process of getting into a good college, securing a scholarship, finding work experience did not make me a fulfilled person. Rather, these experiences only served to divert my attention from things I had not accomplished, like learning healthy means of communication or dedicating myself to being a valued member of the communities I treasure. I have nothing to check of my list of college goals because I do not have a list anymore, because those bulleted lines strangled the more enigmatic values that are far harder to realize.

[su_pullquote]Pain was supposed to make me a better student and a more worthy person, but all it has done is scrape me raw.[/su_pullquote]If you find comfort in structure, and you can compassionately lead yourself on that journey, then by all means go on. But this is all to say that I am done with competition. I am done with sacrificing my values and well-being to feel like I am getting somewhere when all I have ever gotten in return is hurt. I will still do my best for good grades and a job after graduation (and don’t tell my parents that I’ll likely climb again), but as the poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “I am choosing something new / not to suffer uselessly yet still to feel.” Trying to find a higher moral value in the pain I put myself through was all I had ever known. Pain was supposed to make me a better student and a more worthy person, but all it has done is scrape me raw. This is why I finally choose to forgive myself and to feel everything all in its messy totality because no path can save me. Because it is the only way I know to keep going, to scramble towards the sunlight.

Sienna Ruiz ’20 studies in the College of Arts &. She can be reached at sienna.ruiz@wustl.edu.