cypselae

why despair is a dandelion sitting on my desk

Would you believe me if I told you my despair was pale? And not pale like exposed bone but pale like light. That it was delicate. And diaphanous. Made of the softest, purest whites. Indeed, when I think of depression I picture seeds trapped in glass.

I see a paperweight I found on Pinterest with a dandelion inside.

As objects I think they’re beautiful. I admit I’ve coveted them for years. But as an idea, I find them… unsettling. Tragic, even. For while the plant itself is exquisite, it’s trapped. Forever. 

Not framed so much as frozen.

Not preserved so much as imprisoned.

There’s a reason I prefer the word despair to depression. Depression implies some kind of downward pressure. But I do not feel heavy. I feel hollow. To despair, on the other hand, is to be without hope. To hope is to wish. That’s what a dandelion is, is it not? A granter of wishes?

Until we snip it.

What’s so tragic about a cut flower, you ask? But that’s the thing. That fuzzy white ball is not actually the flower. That’s the seeds, of which there are hundreds in a single head. Thousands over the course of a year. Meaning it’s not just the stem we’re cutting, but everything it might have been.

portrait by @fridaphotografie

There’s a special term for the seeds, I learn. Cypselae. Pronounced sip-suh-lee. It’s a beautiful word, like the name of some long-lost nymph. Probably because it was, in fact, first penned by the Greeks. From the old word kupsele. I learn what that means, too. Hollow vessel. And I think, that’s me.

My mind, not unlike the dandelion, is a self-blossoming marvel. A seedhead, if you will. A plumage of thoughts and ideas. That, right there, is the root of my despair. Not that I’m filled with sadness. But that I’m filled with seeds. Seeds I can no longer touch. Or hear. Or feel. All this potential I know is inside me has gone horribly, utterly still.

For months, I don’t write a thing. I’m too tired to reflect. I’ve lost all desire to read. When my library card expires, I let it. Why? Because I’m a paperweight. The irony is not lost on me.

‘opening’ by claire morgan, 2013

In case of emergency, break glass. Is that what I have to do? Break the glass to free my seeds? I imagine holding the ornament in my palm. Imagine it slipping from my fingers. Imagine it plunging then cracking then splintering into a million glittering pieces. Only, no matter how many times I replay it, it never breaks cleanly. 

To shatter the glass is to shatter the seeds as well.

For a time crying makes me feel better. Because if nothing else it’s a form of release. But any relief I might get out of it isn’t just fleeting, it’s superficial. And even if it wasn’t, too much salt in the soil will eventually kill a plant.

You can’t, as it turns out, water a garden with tears. 

So where does that leave me? I can’t cry my way out. I can’t break my way in. If I’m serious about freeing my seeds I have to consider what a seed might actually need. I have to think like a gardener.

Like a botanist.

from the book ‘wild embrace’ by anja murray, illustration by jane carkill

Sun. Water. Air. And some good old fashioned dirt. That’s all a seed needs, right? So that’s what I give myself. 

Every day, I take myself for a walk through the fields behind our house. No earbuds. No music. Nothing. If that’s all I manage, then it’s a good day. If I do literally nothing else, then at least I’ve filled my lungs with green.

Even if it’s raining, I go out. Even if it’s pouring. Especially if it’s pouring. I stand in that downpour. 

And drink. 

And drink.

And drink.

There is one other thing, actually, that I realise I need. 

Wind. 

Anemochory, or wind disposal, is the means by which a dandelion spreads its seeds. An elegant solution. Effective, too. The question is, what does it mean for me and my despair? What might anemochory look like for thoughts? For ideas?

And how does one summon wind when you can barely even catch your own breath?

If you were to sow a crop of dandelions, it would be ready in approximately ninety days. I can’t say for sure how long it takes me, but my first walk is sometime in winter, the air blue and brisk. By the end, it’s yellow, the air humming with bees. A season, let’s call it. That’s how look it takes me to tend to my seeds. But that isn’t all I do.

For the first time in a long time, I go back to therapy. 

For the first time ever, I go on antidepressants. 

I don’t want to be on medication. It feels so counter to everything else I’m doing. I’m a wildflower. I belong in a field. I don’t want a perfectly round, perfectly bleached, perfectly unnatural pill. But I need it. I need it. 

I have a dear friend to thank who helps me see it differently. When I tell her I started on medication, she gently corrects me. Not medication, she says, medicine. I start crying. Language matters. Meaning matters. Both my walks and my medication are helping. They are both medicinal. 

I am reminded of a trick my mum taught me once on how to revive flowers that are beginning to wilt - to dilute a bit of sugar into their water. The next morning when I look down at that tiny white pill, I no longer see chemicals.

I see medicine.

I see sugar.

That’s how things go for a while. My daily walk. My daily pill. I can’t say it feels wildly different from day to day. But eventually, a few months in, my despair begins to thin. What once felt like solid glass around me is now a fine layer of crystal. A few months after that, it is little more than a circle, lightly pencilled-in. 

And what of my seeds, you ask? They’re more alive than they’ve felt in years. They’re positively tingling on the stem. 

It’s around this time I begin to write again.

image by ina jang

I feel it important to note that this is by no means the end of my story. There will come a time, I know, when despair finds me again. Only then, I will have a much better understanding of how to tend to myself.

A creative life, I’m coming to learn, is rarely linear. And never neat. It’s an ever shifting cycle of flowering and seeding and surrendering and grieving. Nor is any one part of that cycle more important than the next.

I need my winters as much as my springs.

Still, when I trudge out for my walk the following morning, I’m greeted with a beautiful, heart-fluttery sight. The fields are just as they were the day before, save for one small detail. Thousands of white fluffy tufts now smile at my feet.

It’s dandelion season, apparently. 

I don’t pick any. I simply wander through their clusters with a small, knowing grin. The day is overcast, the air unseasonably still.

But tomorrow, I have a feeling, there’s a chance of wind.

---

This is the first post of Cypselae by Morgan Grace. If you like my writing, please consider subscribing. Paid subscribers will even receive their own bespoke poem. More info here.

---