Five Things Edition: life's complicated

micro-essays on messiness

The valley is overgrown. A hillside where I remember horses grazing is covered with saplings taller than I am. Vines are choking out barns and outbuildings. Nature is threatening to retake what my ancestors have claimed for generations: farmland, lawns, tiny parking lots around tinier businesses. It feels suffocating. If I stayed, would the forest consume me? Would the rough ridges run haphazardly over my life? I remember being twelve, wondering if I would find the space to stand up straight and not feel smothered.