DYSTOPIA DISPATCHES #1 From Ghost to Garden: How I Started Living Again in a Broken World
Grief, green shoots, and getting feral after lockdown
DYSTOPIA DISPATCHES #1
From Ghost to Garden: How I Started Living Again in a Broken World
-Grief, green shoots, and getting feral after lockdown
The past few years? They chewed me up and spat me out.
Grief. Loss. Betrayal. Life stripped to bone and sinew.
Everything I held dear—gone. People I loved? Ghosts & Strangers now.
And me? I became one too. A half-life haunting my own days, wearing burnout like a badge, wrapped in the shroud of “shoulds.”
Every day was a battleground.
Soundtrack? The Prodigy.
“Roadblox.” “The Day Is My Enemy.”
Mad Max beats pounding while I trudged the barren wastelands of my own life.
I forgot what joy tasted like.
I gave my power away—to people, to promises. Waiting for something or someone out there to make me happy.
Then the universe whispered, “No one’s coming. It’s you now.”
Lockdown Lessons We Forgot
Remember that strange, feral magic of lockdown?
When the world stopped its endless grind?
When skies emptied of planes, streets hushed, and wildflowers staged a riot?
We swapped small talk for shouts over fences. We baked bread, grew things, spoke to each other like we mattered.
And then… they told us to “get back to normal.”
But normal was broken long before the pandemic.
And me? I couldn’t re-integrate. I didn’t want to.
Enter the Garden: My Shangri-La (on £6.99)
Here’s the thing: My garden mirrored my soul.
Neglected. Wild. Overgrown. A space of once-upon-a-time that had surrendered to chaos.
And every time I looked at it, I felt that same weight of shame:
You should sort it. You should fix it. You should be better.
Well, f*ck the shoulds.
One day I snapped. Spent £6.99 on a ridiculous 3D shower curtain for the fence—hiding the weeds, hiding the ghosts. A tiny act, but it sparked something.
Because when you’ve been to hell, even plastic waterfalls can feel like holy water.
That curtain wasn’t just décor. It was defiance.
A statement: I’m still here. I’m making beauty out of scraps.
And from there? Came compost, seed potatoes, broken teapots repurposed as bird feeders.
Improvised, scrappy, punk gardening—the kind that says:
Healing doesn’t wait for perfect. Healing starts where you are, with what you’ve got.
From Ghost to Green Shoots
Now? My garden’s not Chelsea. It’s chaos. It’s life.
Sweet potatoes climbing like rebels on a prison wall.
Pumpkin patch clinging on after horsefly bites and splinters turned my hands into war maps.
Cardboard in growbags because soil is expensive and necessity is the mother of witchcraft.
And me?
I’m out there with dirt under my nails, heart cracking open, remembering what joy feels like.
Because this isn’t just gardening. This is resurrection.
The Manifesto Bit
If you’ve walked through loss, burnout, heartbreak… I see you.
The world will tell you to grind harder, hustle more, slap a vision board on your grief.
But here’s the truth:
Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is plant one seed.
Hang one cheap shower curtain.
Start where you are.
Because small acts? They’re loud rebellions.
And life? It’s not waiting in the boardroom or the algorithm.
It’s here. In the mud. In the weeds.
In the feral garden you claim as your own.
#DystopiaDispatches #FromGhostToGarden #PunkGardening #WitchyHacks #HealingInChaos #EcoRebel #BurnoutRecovery #MidlifeRebellion #FeralLiving #DIYGardenMagic
🌱 Dispatch complete.
Next up: The Shower Curtain Rebellion (with witchy hacks for broke rebels).