Roots and Branches

There was a time when I wanted, more than anything, to be a tree.

Well, maybe not more than anything. I wanted lots of things: to be good, to be seen as
good. To be liked, to be loved. Peace, especially peace of mind. But I had a desperate yearning
for that remove of consciousness, that stretch of curling roots into the wet soil. Tell me, wouldn’t you like to be one with the earth, a growing thing, stalwart and sturdy and reaching to the sky? Wouldn’t that be nicer than living in your head?

In those days, my mother and I walked every day in the woods behind our house, and I
frequently expressed my desire to opt out of humanity. If not a tree, a cat would do. A cicada. A blade of grass. Anything that didn’t think like I did, hurt like I did, feel like I did. After all, trees can’t get depression. Cats can, but I didn’t know that then.

Sometimes, I would curl up at the base of a tree, refusing to move for long periods of
time. I remember the dirt crushed into my jeans, the dead leaves tangled in my hair. Trying to
sink into a hillside. Trying to sink out of my flesh. At the time, I was aware of my
unreasonableness, my outbursts, what an ugly heart I was turning out to have. My mother would wait for me while I laid among the roots or sobbed on fallen logs. In retrospect, I feel a kind of pity for that girl. That self.

My awful longings lasted from mid-2019 into 2020. As the pandemic evolved, I spent
more and more time in the woods, tennis shoes perpetually mud-stained, eyes perpetually wet. Winter turned to spring turned to summer turned to fall, and as school started up again (wholly online), something magical happened.

My friends started texting me.

It was possible they’d never stopped, possible that the total isolation I remember is more
a product of my own self-hating self-absorption than any actual shift in our relationship, but
there is something real to what happened when we started playing online games together and FaceTiming at lunch. In days when I spent much of my time pressed into the corner of the couch, blanket over my head, I needed their attention, their affection, their memes and voice calls over Discord.

Eventually, we started setting up get-togethers. Always outside, of course. The first that I
recall was a picnic at a playground; I remember wearing fuzzy socks under my boots because it was so cold. As night fell, we climbed onto the jungle gym, talking about all the things we
couldn’t talk about when cooped up with our parents. As the weeks unfurled, we kept gathering: meeting around a firepit in my backyard, circling my friend Len’s pool while discussing Minecraft YouTube, playing with swords that chipped when they collided.
Here's the thing: I never wanted to get together. I never wanted that connection. I wanted
to stay in my couch corner, stay nestled in the roots of an oak I could not be. But every time I
saw my friends, something inside me was put to sleep. Something inside me was laid to rest. I
would laugh until I couldn’t stop laughing, flail my way through made-up dance moves, feel the weight in my heart but put it aside.

The friendships didn’t fix me. I still wanted to escape sometimes, still imagined my limbs
as roots and branches. But wasn’t I still a growing thing? Wasn’t I still a slow-motion miracle,
changing with the seasons, reaching upwards yet firmly planted? Trees can communicate through their root systems. Did you know that? In a way, trees have friendships, too.

But trees don’t swordfight in the driveway in the middle of winter. Trees don’t roast
marshmallows or make bad jokes about Hamlet. Trees can’t belt Lorde songs while staring at the stars, and they have no capacity for dramatic photoshoots in borrowed trench coats.

There was a time when I wanted to be a tree. I can still see the appeal.

These days, though, with my tempered longings, I’d rather be a human.