The Expanding Alone
By: Sarah Berger
I bent down, digging my hands into the garden dirt. There was a blade of grass next to my sungold, in the very spot that I’d removed one yesterday. I pulled it out.
At first, I thought that this lockdown might be good. We would all have the chance to grow, unobstructed from society. Though I wasn’t expecting some sort of political reckoning, I hoped we would all learn compassion and empathy. I plucked a purple tomato off a plant and popped it into my mouth. Salty.
I pulled out another weed, something sticky and bristly. Instead, it seemed that we’d all expanded to fill the space the world’s going had left. We stuck out our arms and found empty space, and rather than sitting with it, we made ourselves fill it. My social media was full of mundane observations, a rhythm beating out over and over. I exist. I exist. I exist. I exist. I exist. I shivered and stroked a bean plant. At least I knew solipsism wouldn’t become the dominant political ideology. We were stuck with this pseudo-nihilism, a constant selfishness.
It extended to me as well. Yes, I’d been staying inside, but I’d also been fighting in Facebook comment sections and stirring up drama on Twitter. The fact of the matter was that I was getting sick of myself. I contain multitudes, but sometimes I require a buffer between those multitudes. The self, stretched out to fill a void, becomes oppressive. The worst parts of us become magnified, and the best parts recede.
I looked at the pile of weeds that I’d yanked out and replanted them in different spots. I spread dirt overtop, then went inside and prepared myself to do the same thing the next day.