I’ve Always Been the Constant (or: I Will Simply Build It)

​I became the structure I was never given...

I didn’t grow up with stability.

So I became it.

Since I was seven years old, I’ve been the only thing in my life that didn’t vanish, combust, move, or emotionally evaporate. People changed. Houses changed. Rules changed. Adults absolutely did not have their shit together.

But me?

I stayed.

Which is wild, honestly, because no one told me how. I just figured out way too early that if I wanted safety, consistency, or literally anything that resembled peace, I was going to have to build it myself out of whatever scraps were lying around.

Spoiler alert: the scraps were mostly chaos.

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I always find a way (unfortunately for the universe)

When you’re seven and things feel unpredictable, you don’t call it “resilience.” You call it Tuesday.

You learn how to read a room like it’s a weather system.

You learn how to self-soothe because no one’s coming.

You learn how to become steady because the adults are… not.

I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be strong.

I woke up one day and realized strength was the only tool available.

And once you learn how to survive without a net, you stop asking where the net is supposed to be.

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Recovery didn’t make me. It clocked me.

People love a tidy recovery story. Before/after. Rock bottom/redemption arc. Very inspirational. Ten out of ten for Hallmark.

That’s not what happened.

Recovery didn’t give me strength.

It exposed the fact that I’d been carrying myself my whole damn life.

I didn’t survive by being quiet.

I survived by talking, by being honest. By recovering out loud.

I went looking for recovery spaces that felt gentle, spiritual, open, and human. Something wiccan-friendly. Something that didn’t require me to erase my intuition at the door.

I couldn’t find it.

So naturally, I built it.

This is a recurring theme.

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Growth was last year. Build is my natural state.

Last year, my word was growth. And yeah, I grew. Roots. Boundaries. A backbone. A sense of self that didn’t fold under pressure.

But growth is just potential energy.

This year, my word is build.

Because building is what I’ve always done.

I’m studying horticulture through Oregon State University e-campus and people love to ask,

“But what about hands-on learning?”

I laugh every time.

Bet.

No lab? I built gardens.

No greenhouse? I created microclimates.

No neat, singular setup? Cool, I made multiple biomes.

Desert plants. Riverbank plants. Heat-loving weirdos. Moisture goblins. A whole feral ecosystem because my life has never been one-size-fits-all and neither are my plants.

Did I need separate biomes?

Yes.

Because survival.

Also because plants.

Also because I am, at heart, a feral little goblin who sees an empty space and thinks what if this became a habitat.

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This is not chaos. This is competence with dirt on it.

People sometimes mistake my confidence for intensity.

My autonomy for rebellion.

My passion for ego.

But this isn’t chaos.

This is practice.

This is the result of a lifetime of learning how to build stability out of nothing. Of trusting myself when systems failed. Of creating containers instead of waiting for permission to exist inside one.

I don’t wait anymore.

I don’t ask nicely.

I don’t pretend I don’t know what I’m doing.

Because I already know how this ends:

I find a way.

I always have.

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This is the life I built (and I’m proud of it)

This life; my recovery, my education, my homestead, my biomes, my voice…isn’t luck.

It’s muscle memory.

It’s the continuation of a pattern that started when I was seven years old and realized, quietly and clearly, that I was going to have to be the one who stayed.

Growth taught me I could survive.

Building is how I choose to live.

And if this feels like the beginning of a book?

Good.

Because it is.