What do you do when the world is not for you? (Hint: you stumble into one that is)

Wild chamomile grows in my alley.

This was not something I knew in the Before. In the Before, I jammed my headphones into my ears and walked myself silly, too caught up in beats and churning feet to notice. There was no need to savor alleys. Save the savoring for far prettier trails, the ones I hit every few days back when. 

The scent of wood-fired pizza also grows in my alley.

When the intoxicating, homey waft hits, my brain snaps: not for you.

*

When you are sick and limited, the world is a lot of not for you’s.

All the food packages lining the aisles of the grocery store: not for you. Not on the 12-ingredient diet that keeps me from 2am agonyfests.

Cute outfits: not for you. I’m sporting 8” extra inches of not-pregnant, looks-pregnant abdominal distention. Hand me my muu-muu before I confuse anyone else.

Reducing stress with movement. Not for you. ME/CFS means nope.

Spontaneity, going with the flow, shoes with heels, financial stability, glovebox snacks, regular showers, making the bed, making money, making a difference, making it through a movie without a migraine: not for you.   

And wood-fired-pizza: definitely not for you.

*

I’m not living in the same world as everybody else. In that world, ladies who look just like me somehow pick up kids, nail work deadlines, scrub tubs, do laundry, and hoist heavy bags onto sore but competent shoulders.

The trails, the paychecks, the pretty pastries in the glowing cases are for them. For their feet, for their hard work, for their functional stomachs.

In the Before, I didn’t know that I loved being one of them, because I didn’t know there was anything there to love. Walking the alleys just felt like… walking in an alley. Trying to grind down my own whirring energy. Sometimes I felt euphoric with the right song and an uplifting movie playing in my brain, obliterating the scene before me. But mostly I just walked and walked and walked, trying to outwalk the I don’t even know what now.

I didn’t notice the chamomile. Not for you.

*

I can just barely swing one alley block and back, now. It only makes it into the spoon budget every three weeks or so.

That makes it special, even when it’s impromptu. I hadn’t done A Thing yesterday yet, so when I took out the trash, I just kept going. No headphones now. I prefer the satisfying crunch of gravel. No brain movies. I’d rather see the light dipped low, gilding the trees in summer gold.

Back here, it’s quiet, a little chirpy, but just basic birds. Weedy flowers root in awkward patches. Anywhere else they’d be ugly—gangly and unkempt. In my slow summer haze, I’m charmed by their rambling dorkiness.

Our town tilts, and the slight slope means I see endless alleys stretching ahead, the shrinking trees haloing a green, inviting tunnel. I cannot accept, but I can admire. In the mid-August throes of summer, it’s lush and dry and pretty. The temperature is perfect.

Closer up in the backyards, people place their sillier lawn ornaments, inside jokes and offbeat gifts front lawns can’t present and stay presentable. The less-nice bikes, garbage and recycling slouch back here. There are rusted car parts and spare raspberries, a little too late.

And growing up between the tire tracks, the wild chamomile. The more it’s stomped, the sweeter it smells.

This is for you, the soft secret world of my fifty feet of alley seems to say.  

*

So there’s the world that I haunt but don’t inhabit, the world of supermarkets and sidewalks and workplaces.

But there’s another world, too, not just in the alley, and I can tell only some of us see it, even if we all live here.

The old dudes tottering with their ski poles around my bench see it. They aren’t on cell phones or yelling after dogs. They are scooching slowly enough to see the grass wave hello. They creak forward, hunched and stiff, but their smiles crack so easily when they see me. “Another day!” their polite greetings seem to say. “We get another goddamn glorious day. Hot diggity.”

For you, replies the day, smugly, to her aching admirers.  

My spry friends come with me every once in a while, too, to the secret world. It might be a pause to admire a slightly above-average rose. Camp-chair conversations in nondescript grass. My neighbor told me that a stranger had gasped aloud in delight at seeing my unimpressive but also unexpected fire escape flower farm. Whoever she was, she was visiting our secret world of minuscule delights.

For you, my flowers say, to anyone who wanders to my quiet corner of an old building.

*

Let’s not shit ourselves: this world of average if delightful details is not the world I wanted. Often when I’m trying to find it, pushing my rollator down some lesser-loved rec path, I wish I could just fucking hike. Sometimes when the light is right and the breeze is soft, it is an infuriating indifference. “Don’t you miss me?” I want to snap at the trees, the sunset, the whole world that’s not for you. But life goes on, and no, they don’t.

When I’m not in it, the tiny world never seems like enough. Earlier this summer, I didn’t even bother to try and find it. But when I don’t try to find it, the regular world becomes a never-ending game of keep-away. The marriages and vacation photos and functioning cars and loaded potluck tables fly over my head. Not for you. Never for you.

I don’t have to try that hard to find it. But I do have to try. And when there’s been a lot of not for yous, I forget to try at all.

But when I do go out and find it, it’s never twee or forced or fake. The little leaves really do fascinate me. The sureness of the trees, quietly reaching, truly soothes. The little creek, not even worth naming, brightens me right up with its unmajestic chortles. My headaches are there, my tiredness is there, but the bodily bullshit is what I don’t really notice, in those moments.

Because all of it is saying, for you. For you, for you, for you.
When I am in it, it really is enough.

*

I love it when I can tell that someone else is in this miniature nirvana with me. Especially strangers.
Hi. You see it too. And they don’t! Isn’t this magic?

We can only hang onto it for a moment. A few hours, tops. We can’t live our whole lives in a reverie.

But in these tiny graces, we meek really do inherit the earth.

I know you know. You’re only here if you know the specific agony of wafting pizza or watching your kids or parents grow up without you. You’re only here if you don’t think those vastly different injustices are really that different anymore, because it’s all just one big pile of not for you.

You’re only here if you’ve started to smell your own wild chamomile.
So strong you can’t believe you never smelled it before.

So this one is for you. Especially if you’ve forgotten the for yous.
A reminder they’re out there. That we’re out there.

For you.
For us.

This post is from my newsletter on Substack. Most newsletters won’t appear here as well, but I’m mad I made a few typos in the Substack that went out to readers, so it is here in its correct form as well.