THE REBOUND
IN THE THROES OF HEARTBREAK, Alice Vincent FOUND SOLACE IN THE MOST UNLIKELY OF PLACES, AND SET ABOUT PUTTING DOWN ENTIRELY NEW ROOTS
When the man she thought she’d marry walked out of her life, Alice Vincent found solace in the most unlikely place: her local gardens
As I neared the park, I felt my lungs expand. The cold air filled my throat, fine rain misted my face. In one direction, hordes of commuters in polished brogues and heels walked towards the train station. I, in my mud-encrusted worker boots, walked in the other direction, towards a place that, over the past few months, had become my sanctuary.
The community gardens were easily missed, hidden behind a high Victorian wall. But beyond the ancient bricks lay a magical world where a grapevine-filled greenhouse crested over a sea of carefully tended allotments, all crafted by volunteers.
Both tradition and romantic comedies dictate that in the wake of a break-up, one should spend time in a fugue state of misery and hangover, the whispers of cocktails and regret on every breath. Instead, I’d been pushing a spade through heavy soil and nestling precious bulbs into the dirt with my bare hands.
I had tried it, the hedonism; at least for the first few months. The summer blasted by as I shrugged off the settled life I had grown used to and tried on different versions of myself in an attempt to feel better. I was too anxious to be alone in the beginning, too afraid of falling asleep without him. I went out with friends, drinking under fading skies until the laughter turned to tears. I was 27 and single for the first time in five years. So much of the person I’d become was entwined with someone else, it was a struggle to work out what was left of me. How was I to recover from the fact that the man I thought I would marry had walked out of the home we had made together, having told me he had fallen out of love with me?
We’d been a little ahead of our time, Josh and I. We met in our early twenties and ended up falling into a long-distance relationship that existed in precious, cut-off worlds – weekends spent on the expanse of the Pennines, hours tapped out through Gchat. I was living in London trying to make it as a journalist, while he was still a student up north. We quickly became the most grownup couple in my social group, eventually buying a flat together.
On paper – or rather, on Facebook – it looked idyllic: bargain mid-century furniture and dinners from the posh butcher, while our friends stumbled messily through their early twenties. We fell
into a domestic rhythm – joint Picturehouse membership, Sunday supermarket trips and, for me, gardening.
I’d never been interested in horticulture before, and yet I found myself addicted to growing things. Anything, really: Crayolabright geraniums picked up at the supermarket, cheap little succulents found on the high street. Before long, our balcony was filled with colour, fragrance and possibility. Hours would vanish out there, my mind quietened, giving me an unexpected peace I’d never found in London before. There was such a deep satisfaction in seeing things growing, fronds unfurling, buds fattening – life’s most beautiful processes right in front of my eyes.
But as my little oasis grew, my relationship constricted. At first, I wrapped myself up in a denial that was constructed from the sheer ease of what we had. When it was just the two of us, we were really good at making each other happy, delighting in our in-jokes and keeping the rest of the world at bay. But in company, we fractured – he found me irritating, while I resented his stubbornness. We would row about it, until I realised it was easier for us to socialise alone.
”I LOVED HOW MY PLANTS CARRIED on growing REGARDLESS OF THE
drama in my life. IN WATCHING THEM SURVIVE, I realised I could, too”
Ultimately, we struggled. I pushed for more: more adventure, more fun, more friends. He pulled back, wanting life to settle. As the years went on, the space between us grew.
When it all fell apart, one cool June morning, it felt like an avalanche. What grounded me – the solidity of him and the future of which I was so certain – was reduced to rubble. I could barely breathe through the dust. He walked in as I was eating breakfast and told me we needed a break. The crunch of cereal between clenched teeth is what I mostly remember.
And so it started with a break. Not one that had been calmly and mutually decided upon, but something that sort of happened when he packed a small suitcase and wheeled it out of the door. He never came back.
It’s funny, how practicality can subsume heartbreak. The few I told were fascinated by what would happen to our home, where each of us would live and what we would do with the long-haul flights we’d recently booked. (Perhaps it is more difficult to look into the teary eyes of the recently heartbroken and ask, instead, when they think it might stop hurting.) What’s more, Josh and I are practical people and we got on with the practical details – working out what we’d do with the newspaper subscription, how we’d pay the bills, how we’d eventually sell our flat.
I sublet a room in a grey high-rise next to a dual carriageway. Much of the joy in those following months was synthetic, fuelled by alcohol and desperation, but occasionally I would catch glimmers of pure happiness in seeing small green shoots of life push through pavement cracks. To see something growing in such trying conditions – of scorching heat and arid concrete – offered hope. If those plants could be beautiful, maybe I could recover too.
Josh and I took turns in the flat until we figured out what to do with it. I was still partying hard at the weekends, but I’d find myself tending to my pots and window boxes mere hours after I’d come back to the empty flat, eyes black with last night’s make-up. I loved how my plants carried on growing regardless of the drama in my life. In watching them function – the way the flowers turned to follow the course of the sun; how they swelled after a good quench – I began to appreciate the necessities of life. In watching them survive a hot summer, I realised I could, too.
Walking through Brockwell Park late one Sunday afternoon, I stumbled upon the community gardens and it felt like an answer. There were vegetable beds, cutflower patches, fruit trees and pleasingly productive compost heaps, all linked by pretty winding paths. It was beautiful. The next day, I signed up as a volunteer.
Over the next six months, as I bent and twisted among the flower beds, the heartbreak seemed to settle. I’d felt so useless for so long, but in the community gardens I felt useful again. The weeding I’d done one Saturday morning allowed another volunteer to plant something new. The tasks I was given forced me to use new tools and move my body in new ways. I’d come home cold and tired, but happy. With the fresh air and crumbs of soil came a realisation that renewal – of the earth, of plants and of my own life – was inevitable.
That day, I was digging – heavy, physical work. With two other women, I shifted clods of soil into a wheelbarrow and pushed it down the garden. As we worked, the director of the gardens told us about tits history – how the place had been transformed from a rubbish tip with locals jumping over the walls. It had taken 2O years of strangers’ hard work to create this love-filled place. As she spoke, I unearthed a chunk of Victorian fireplace tile, the glaze shining beneath the mud.
For months, I’d wrestled with how I’d failed in our relationship, going over the same painful parts of our story to see if I could have done anything better. I carried so much from losing it all, but I could also actively help things grow. Hearing how the gardens came to be as I literally unearthed a piece of its history, I realised that everything that had passed between Josh and I had been necessary in shaping the woman I was becoming.
We dug for hours. The conversation moved on, the drizzle faded. But I left the gardens feeling lighter that day. Everything has a history. Soil keeps secrets, but it holds new beginnings, too. Rootbound: Rewilding a Life by Alice Vincent is out now