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A long time ago, in the late 80s/early 90s, I had a friend who bought a fiddle leaf fig to brighten his rental unit. It was a small but established tree with large, pear-shaped leaves, and it must have cost him a bit. I’d never seen a fiddle leaf fig before, though my parents and grandmother and I were all keen gardeners who grew a wide variety of plants.
My feelings about my friend’s indoor plant were neutral. However, another friend in our large, multi-aged group absolutely hated it and didn’t hold back on sharing his views. This person dubbed the poor plant, “the ugly plant”, and I wandered through the next two decades or so of my life thinking about fiddle leaf figs in this way. “Oh, there’s an ugly plant”, I’d say to myself. Swipe and move on. Nothing to see.
Then last year, while waiting at the vet’s, I noticed a fiddle leaf fig in the corner of the room and looked at it with fresh eyes. Natural light was pouring through the window - and so through the leaves of the plant - revealing a beautiful and intricate pattern of venation and cellular building blocks. I was gobsmacked by my chance find, and marvelled at the artistry and cleverness of nature.
In my old life, I used to liken my severely violent reality (that gave me my complex-PTSD) to dragging myself across a minefield:
There goes another limb.
Dodged a landmine there.
The hope of finally reaching the ever-distant boundary to safety kept me going in my darkest times:
Keep going.
Almost there.
Just a bit further…
However, for my new life, the war zone scenario was no longer appropriate. When a medical practitioner smashed down my plate-glass shield of denial and told me I had to make radical change immediately, or I might not survive to support my children, I listened and I acted fast. Now, just over three years later, the most positive analogy I can come up with, as to how I survived so much violence in my lifetime of five-plus decades, is this:
Every time I was neglected; had a leaf knocked off; got pruned back too hard; was lashed to a stake; suffered disease after disease; was thirsty, or lacked nourishment; had too much sun, or not enough – I just kept going and going, and growing and growing, until one day I was as big as this tree in Merthyr Village shopping centre in Binkenba.
And yet, in my new life, other people are still trying to stunt my growth and damage my health. Why?
Well, despite being a very kind-hearted, loyal, and generous person (fact – not boast), others have – and still do – look at me and see a highly irritating person who doesn’t fit neatly into any medical, ableist, social, philosophical, musical, or artistic box, and so they make me wrong because I am different. They lose their tempers, yell at me, bully me, try to turn me into someone I am not – and can never be – or put me in the too-hard basket and try to pretend I am not there.
So here I am today – fully grown, with the scars of a survivor, and the wisdom of a person who has seen too much for one lifetime – an atypically-minded, atypically-bodied, and atypically-gendered person, who will not jump onto, or into, the box, and will certainly not agree to be forced in there while someone else nails down the lid.
I’m here.
I’m out as me.
I’m proud to be me.
And I’m saying no to violence, control and discrimination.
Other people’s stuff is just that – other people’s stuff. Don’t let them con you into thinking it’s got anything to do with you – it really doesn’t.
Some people will look at the fiddle leaf and see ugliness, while others will see beauty and wonder. The paradox is, it’s the same plant – and the fiddle leaf can’t help being a fiddle leaf; that’s what it was born to be. It’s the same with people.
Someone else’s perception of you is nothing more than perception, and it’s not in your capacity to change – so let it go.
The only power we truly own is the power to change ourselves.
Gen Memory
January 2025
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