Late Afternoon Glory
Bloom when you're ready.
Here are two photos of my garden. One is of a voluntary untended morning glory vine that regrew after being nibbled to death by rabbits last year. It gives me unexpected joy.
The other shot reveals the rest of my garden, full of thistles and neglected tomatoes and beans and radishes gone to seed.
In the past six weeks, I have been officially diagnosed with both autism (the kind formerly known as Asperger's) and ADHD (got the final test results today). I've also been previously diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and C-PTSD. The symptoms of those last three have gotten significantly better over the last 3-5 years with some careful, intensive treatment from a whole team of medical and mental health professionals.
Other symptoms, such as the state of my garden, all the good and bad of it, continue apace.
Doing better doesn't always look good. Making progress doesn't always feel good. Having a helpful diagnosis is only one step in a long, slow, uncertain trudge that is meant to be forward but often struggles to be construed as such.
I'll be trying out ADHD medication for the first time after growing up medication-averse and putting off the option for years when it might have done me a lot of good much sooner. That's all ok. We often don't realize that readiness is 3/4 of any true solution. That goes for therapy, moving on, writing, getting clean, asking for help--any number of things in life.
Gardening, too.
Just because this morning glory was ready to bloom at the end of the summer a year after I planted it, when nothing else is flourishing, including my thumb, doesn't mean it's out of season. And neither am I.
Gosh, I didn't know how much I needed to hear that from myself until I typed it out.
Maybe some of you are ready to hear it, too.
It's easy to feel surrounded by nothing but mess, full of insufficiency, but these blooms are unashamed, awkward and all. I love them.
I love me, too.
“Doing better doesn't always look good. Making progress doesn't always feel good. Having a helpful diagnosis is only one step in a long, slow, uncertain trudge that is meant to be forward but often struggles to be construed as such.”
🎯👆🎯
I’ll be keen to hear whether medication helps with your ADHD stuff.
Well done for trudging through the arduous process of getting diagnoses.
Doing better doesn’t always look good. Thanks for this reminder.