A short story about a year (feat. an even shorter story about a plant)

How neatly a year wraps up a collection of events,  which you metaphorically tie up with the garish ribbon left over from Christmas and pop it into the archive of your life, later becoming material for your own anecdotes – both interesting and tedious in equal measure – as you take an oft-unprompted trip down memory lane.

I said something like this last year, didn’t I?

I’d love to delve into some kind of abstract longform where I write something and it’s obviously an allegory for something else. But that requires planning and the patience to develop that running thread of thought. And I’m just not feeling it.

Instead, this is going to be a bit more loose. Some things will be metaphors for other things that I’m not entirely comfortable talking about at face value, while others will be hideously on-the-nose, like that blackhead that won’t go away. You scrub at it, using every product on the market, but it remains a nagging doubt in your mind every time you gaze on your shapely schnozz in the mirror.

Why won’t it just go away?

I regret that 2018 started with those little doubts, because everything looked like it was coming up my way. And then it didn’t. Then it did. Then my mind decided that it wasn’t. Now? I’m not really sure what to think.

That’s a fucking clumsy segue. I’m sorry.

2018 began from where 2017 had left off, with yours truly being sent a job offer to sign, seal and deliver – both by email and on paper, proving that you can sign your life away in both analog and digital. What a world.

I was excited, and deservedly so, for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, I was leaving the damp-squib-second-half-of-2017 behind, where I’d trudged through a dissertation I barely had the requisite interest in, a rather-epic blip in which I almost sacked off said dissertation because I’d hit the wall with nothing left to give, and somehow recovered and bundled a bunch of bullshit together to snatch a first from the jaws of defeat. It’s a comeback story, sure, but it’s far too mundane to be any kind of heart-warming underdog movie or Rocky film…

…or it would be, if Rocky was in a ring with himself, punching the shit out of himself, being floored by himself, before leaning on his closest circle of people to get up before the referee counted him out. Not too contrived, moving swiftly on.

There was that, and a host of other things that somehow conspired to absolutely kick me into a hopeless heap of apathy. It’s amazing how much your friends and family can help you, even though they had no idea at the time.

With relative freedom of working arrangements (which was far less fun than I’d originally hoped) I’d moved back to Oxford, determined to make a fucking good go of it having left there mid-August under a bit of a dark cloud. I’d really missed Deliveroo that much.

Soon, I tried to get settled into the new job. Over the first couple of months I’d become a little acquainted with Heathrow, vilifying Terminal 2 – principally because of its shocking lack of a Pret A Manger – and trips to various European locales (along with a couple to the Middle East) at the very least got me out of the house.

But I couldn’t settle. I tried everything, including not being me, but that just wasn’t an option.

I blinked. Suddenly, months had passed and I didn’t really know where I was. I’d ambled through deserts and cities, directionless, and without any real inkling of where I’d be next. Well, I did, it said so on the plane ticket, but where would I actually be?

I’d never felt more disconnected; ironic, in today’s climate where everything’s so intertwined like an out-of-control sprouting of spider plants, I felt like a wilted shoot planted in someone else’s plot, head hanging low and hoping my roots would somehow grow towards the others. And they never did.

—

Although barely visible, some people noticed the small wilted plant. It looked out of place, and it certainly felt out of place – the bigger, more sprawling foliage was more obtrusive.

Of course, the little plant tried to take the surrounding atmosphere in, deluded by the thought that it would adapt, but it came to realise it wasn’t the right plant in the right garden. 

Nobody’s really certain how it got there. Some say it was first planted by a world-class gardener – a real greenfingers. His plants and trees were prize-winners at county fairs, growing to tremendous proportions and yielding fruit to be enjoyed by many.

He’d planted the little seed, but as the winter months dawned, he was worried that he couldn’t give it the sunlight it needed. Perhaps, he thought, the Mediterranean climate will help it break free of the topsoil.

For a time, it did. It broke through the top, spreading two little leaves out, but it couldn’t do any more. 

One day, he decided to see how it was getting on. He spied the tiny, stunted plant; its roots were barely embedded in the soil, as the tips of the leaves had started to turn tennis-ball yellow. 

It was like it had almost given up.

And so, after returning home, the gardener found a little space in his own plot. He dug it up, filled it with compost, and then filled a small pot with the same mulch.

He returned to the tiny plant in the dead of night, plant pot in hand, and plucked it from the ground. Next, he made a tiny little divot in the pot’s soil with his finger, placing the plant’s malnourished roots inside and cautiously shielding them with a sprinkling of the dirt. 

In the morning, when the light was a little better, he extricated the plant from the pot and into the carefully-prepared corner of his garden, making sure it was fed and watered.

In a couple of weeks, the plant had grown a little. Its roots had reassuringly meandered their way downwards into the earth, as the leaves were a little more assured in size and colour.

Soon, he hoped, it might be as big as the others.

—

Things are a bit better now. I’m slowly breaking out of old routines, trying to grow and trying not to worry so much – although so much is changing, it’s sometimes very overwhelming, especially when you’ve mapped out this idealistic vision of how life will be.

Truth is, every prediction you ever make is wrong. You can’t predict who you’ll meet, or what you’ll do, or where you’ll end up.

And that’s what keeps me going.

To 2019, and all of its twists and turns. Even the shit ones.