F#ck the Ferns

From "My Jesus Year of Goo"

It was well into summer as Jamie slid into the forest.

As sand turned into soil, a miraculous thing happened: her body was no longer goo. She became particles in the air. A forest spirit.*

*still a human

Jamie looked back at her IKEA bag, discarded at the forest’s entrance. She laid a couple rocks on top, to prevent it from blowing away. She suspected the chrysalis may no longer be of use to her, but better safe than sorry.

She floated along a paved path into the dense forest, through the Sitka spruce and western hemlock trees. The ground was protected by moss and wild bushels of plants. Without the paved dirt trail, the forest’s floor would be as green as its canopy. Sunlight streamed through the branches, and her spirit was enveloped in the warm humid air as she roamed. There was nothing objectively oppressive about the forest.

But the forest was full of ferns.

Ferns were Jamie’s Boyfriend’s favorite. The plant isn’t native to Chicago, unless you count plant stores. The fern love came from the romantic view Jamie’s Boyfriend had about the Pacific Northwest. He would wax poetic about the hikes he’d taken when he’d visit that area, in forests much like the one Jamie was floating in now. Sometimes late at night, when they’d text each other from their separate apartments, both on the edge of sleep but never wanting a conversation to end, he’d suggest they run away to “the PNW” together. Jamie, half in a dream already, would imagine their potential lives and smile her way to sleep.

Every fern was a reminder of how much of a sucker she was, she thought. She was surrounded by him. His disarming charisma. His empty promises. His singular way of loving her.

She kept following the path, determined it would lead her out of this tropical plant hellscape and into the next phase of her evolution. She felt choked by ferns, seemingly multiplying with every foot further into the forest. The imaginal disks that were once in the caterpillar, then the goo, and now this started to chant:

“What’s the truth? What’s the truth? What’s the truth?”

The ferns were mocking her romanticism, she knew it. She had fallen in love with someone who could never commit to her, and yet she believed this man was created to love her. It seemed that every bit of their personalities were curated to support one another’s dreams, wishes, and talents.

“The truth is, I’m a fool,” she said out-loud to the forest. “I’ve known that since I was a caterpillar, even before I started melting.”

She anticipated this would reveal the answers, maybe even her heart. But there was nothing but soft wind, warm air, and ferns. So she kept on the trail.

She thought of how Jamie’s Boyfriend came into her life. It was a pandemic Hail Mary move, borne from lockdown and not from strategy, and certainly not from ethics. It wasn’t supposed to happen. But the last two years weren’t supposed to have happened, she thought. Everything was a result from the pandemic’s domino effect.

The roller-coaster relationship had been her life raft and life’s calling. In the beginning, Jamie was confident he was a healing refuge not only for the present, but for the trauma she endured as an adolescent. An equitable relationship of the soul, with a loving patriarchal slant.

“Am I yolked to the fantasy of this man forever?” she asked. “Is that it? Do I need to admit that or something?”

There was no answer. Certainly no heart.

Jamie was drowning in the oppressive ferns and punishing memories. She tried to run through the forest, but spirits can only float so quickly. If a spirit could sob, she would have done that, too. Her despair turned to rage.

Every fern was an echo of “I love you”, a “good morning” text that was dropped in at 8 a.m. on the dot, a reassurance from him that she was “really that hot”, his golden green eyes that would roll in the back of his head when she’d ride him, the yellow bruises he deeply craved and appreciated when she’d bite his chest.

Jamie suddenly found herself in a clearing. It wasn’t the end of the path, but it was a deviation from the forest. The path careened to the edge of a bluff, overlooking an ocean. The forest, she discovered, was adjacent to a beach. Here must be the perfect spotlight to confess her sins.

“I’m a failure,” she panted as she watched the dark waves crash on the rocky beach, “I’m worthless. I made so many mistakes. I know without my heart back, I’m damned to always feel incomplete.”

There was a view. There was an admittance of fault. But nothing from the universe was granted in that moment.

“What’s the truth what’s the truth what’s the truth?”

Furious and out of ideas, Jamie careened back into the forest and pushed on towards the path’s end. She thought of every time she sacrificed her time and well-being to be available to him. Every time he asked her to wait down the block before coming over, just to be sure no one saw her. Every time she was quickly hung up on because someone came home earlier than expected.

If he had only been cruel, she never would’ve stayed. It was the apologies, the devoted fawning, the mythology Jamie’s Boyfriend helped create about their relationship that would drag her back into his orbit. Every time she was upset enough to step away, his love would pull her back. Even though he was the one who ultimately couldn’t commit, Jamie’s Boyfriend never let her go on his own volition.

But she never wanted him to.

In that moment of recognition, Jamie was confronted with the path’s end. The forest had opened up to the beach. She saw dead trees litter the border between forest and beach, then a stretch of smooth rocks and warm sand, followed by a giant black ocean. She floated to the tide’s edge, and looked into the sea. The ocean knew the truth, and now so did she.

“I surrendered to love to such a degree that I betrayed myself,” she said softly. “I chopped off pieces of my heart and soul, and offered them freely to someone I trusted. I was like the fucking Giving Tree. The love felt so life-sustaining, I’d do anything not to lose it. I gave him permission to emotionally eviscerate me in the long-term because he was giving me life-sustaining love in the moment. I was on the edge of insanity by the end.”

The ocean did not respond, because it really was an ocean. Jamie floated into it. Her particles melted with the saltwater. Looking up to the sky, bright and blue, Jamie let the truth in that moment release into the air:

“I broke my heart as much as he did.”

From the sky, an exquisitely sleek wooden box descended and landed on the beach. Jamie emerged from the water, still an air particle spirit of some kind, and picked it up. Much like a music box, there was a small latch on the front and hinges on the back. She began to open it, but was interrupted by another object coming from the sky: a white dove. It landed on the box, with an envelope tied to its foot. The front of the envelope read:

TO THE POWERS THAT BE, HERE’S JAMIE’S HEART.

Jamie untied the envelope, and desperately curious to know what was inside. The imaginal disks that led her this far urged her to open the box first. But she couldn’t resist. She opened both at the same time.

And that’s how Jamie wound up in a white void with Patrick Swayze.

Art by Alyssa Klash