Tales from New York: Houseplant Homicide

Originally published on Substack.

I bought a little houseplant from the grocery store a few months ago. Since my massive pothos had already taken up the prime fire escape window real estate, I put this one on my desk.

For a while, it seemed to be doing just fine. It sat on my desk, I watered it occasionally when the soil looked dry. But then, its leaves started to brown. They’d fall off entirely after a few days and I had resigned myself to the idea that this plant, like many others before it, would simply die and I’d buy a new one.

When my mom came into town last weekend, she noticed my sickly plant and asked about it. I brushed it off saying it was dying and I’d probably toss it soon and pick up a new one. On her last day in town, I had to leave early in the morning to catch a train to New Jersey for a work thing, so she was left unattended in my apartment for a few hours before her flight. When I got home that night, my sickly plant had been moved to the fire escape window beside my pothos. I left it there.

Two days later, I noticed it had new growth. I hadn’t watered it in days, but even just two days of sunlight had encouraged new growth and healing in this living thing I’d more or less left for dead.

This has led me to rethink two major ideas.

1. If you water it, it will grow.

We’re all familiar with the adage “the grass is greener on the other side” and the subsequent rebuttal of “the grass is greener where you water it.” But I think any lawn-care-obsessed dad worth his weight in turf knows that it is entirely possible to overwater a lawn and, as we saw with my houseplant, water is often not the only thing necessary for survival.

Love and effort are often not enough.

You can pour all the love you have into something, but sometimes it’s about where it’s planted. I often felt out of place in California despite being surrounded by family, friends, and people who poured copious amounts of love into me because it wasn’t the right windowsill. I was being watered on a desk and was consistently frustrated with myself because I wasn’t growing. I was trying so hard and losing my leaves left and right. Moving to New York was my fire escape moment. Two days, four months, whatever. It’s all about where you’re planted. Which leads me to…

2. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

Blatantly not true. In fact, so many people who find life, love, and success in New York make it here because we?couldn’t?make it where we came from. We were the weirdos. The go-getters. The outcasts. We came from all over the world from homes where we felt out of place, misunderstood, and alone.

I live by myself in a studio apartment and it is somehow the least alone I have ever felt. I couldn’t make it anywhere; I couldn’t make it in California. I didn’t enjoy hiking or surfing and I think anyone who goes to Los Angeles on purpose is a psychopath. I tried so hard to grow where I was planted but it just. Wasn’t. Me.

On the phone with an old friend the other day, she noted how seemingly impressive it was that I made a life so quickly. In four months, I’d made friends, I was excelling at work, and I had brand new interests and hobbies. On paper, sure, it seems impressive, but I put in minimal effort and got the maximum result.

This is not because I’m an extraordinary person. I am just a woman. Many of you have read along with me from when Oxytocin Chronicles started to now, and some of you know me personally, so you know I’ve made mistakes. I’ve been a victim and I’ve been the villain in other people’s stories—rightfully so. But life becomes easy when you stop trying to force yourself to adapt to conditions that are against who you fundamentally are.

You are the only you that will ever exist.?Society has done us a disservice by making us think that grand failure is more embarrassing than settling. We would rather white-knuckle the wrong decision than admit we were wrong. We would rather cut ourselves to pieces trying to fit in the box decided for us by our parents, our peers, or our communities than take the chance to find the box we fit in.

It is entirely possible that you fail miserably. Good.

I encourage you to royally mess up. I encourage you to quit the job that’s no longer fulfilling you, to move to the state or country that’s always called to you, to dump your shitty partner who doesn’t truly see you or bring out the best in you, to call off your wedding, to tell your parents you’re gay, to chase that artistic passion instead of a corporate slough that pays more. Whatever the hell you want. Whoever the hell you are. Be that person.

I promise you it is not too late and it is all survivable. But over-watering yourself on a desk might not be.

Go find your windowsill. Then tell me all about it.