my roses look like shit this year

I to­tal­ly ne­glect­ed them.

And oth­er than wa­ter­ing them just so they didn’t die (al­though they prob­a­bly still would have lived) I didn’t pay them any at­ten­tion at all. I didn’t even reg­u­lar­ly prune them. They’re all hips right now ex­cept for a cou­ple blooms, which, I only no­ticed this morn­ing when I looked out my back door. I did not ex­pect to see them still going. 

One thing I’ve learned about ros­es is that they are to­tal pri­ma don­nas. If you want them to look good you have to pam­per the hell out of them – fungi­cides, in­sec­ti­cides, prun­ing, fer­til­iz­ers, shap­ing, the works. 

The more rose bush­es you have the more work they are, and you have to do it al­most every day. I don’t mind do­ing all that un­der even halfway nor­mal cir­cum­stances. It’s a hob­by of mine and I love them, so I re­al­ly do en­joy it. But this year has been any­thing oth­er than halfway nor­mal circumstances. 

Ac­tu­al­ly, this stu­pid ass year has been, “Oops! All Ab­nor­mal Circumstances!”

An­oth­er thing I’ve learned about ros­es is that they are quite pos­si­bly nature’s most beau­ti­ful weed. They’re some­what dif­fi­cult to kill, and even if you do fuck all ex­cept wa­ter them, they’ll keep right on grow­ing. They’ll look hideous, and have black spot and form hips and get all gnarly and out of shape, but they’ll still bloom. 

 

I’ve felt a lot like my ros­es this year, which has – with­out a doubt – been the hard­est year of my grown adult life. 

The worst year I can think of be­fore this was 2016, but that was a ter­ri­ble year for all of us and I re­call that oth­er­wise be­ing a fair­ly de­cent year for me per­son­al­ly. Be­fore that, it was as far back as 2003. 

That was the year my fa­ther died, and while that was the worst thing that has ever hap­pened to me, it was one huge blow that I grad­u­al­ly healed from over time, in­stead of a 365 day ad­vent cal­en­dar where al­most every god­damn door has a turd be­hind it. Like 2026!

Much like my ros­es, I haven’t re­al­ly put a lot of ef­fort into my­self this year. I want­ed to be pret­ty, but I haven’t felt pret­ty or even re­al­ly cared all that much about putting in the ef­fort to ac­tu­al­ly look pret­ty. Clothes and hair have been an af­ter­thought. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen a pic­ture of me from even just two or three years ago and thought, “Damn, I looked great. Now I look like a sea hag.” (Please laugh at that, it’s okay.)

Most days I’ve con­sid­ered it a win if I prop­er­ly take care of our cat, feed my­self enough food, and brush my teeth at least once. A week is con­sid­ered a win if I’ve man­aged (for the most part) to stay on top of bills and dish­es and I’ve tak­en a show­er at least three times. Chores and er­rands are ac­com­plished all at once in a sud­den burst of mo­ti­va­tion or not at all.
 

It’s not just me, ei­ther. I don’t know a sin­gle per­son who isn’t go­ing through some shit right now or hasn’t dealt with a stu­pid­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of shit through­out the year: Death, can­cer, de­struc­tion or loss of prop­er­ty, fi­nan­cial ruin, job loss, in­jury or se­vere ill­ness, mar­i­tal prob­lems, kids strug­gling, work dra­ma, com­plete men­tal breakdown … 

You name it, it’s hap­pened to me or some­one I know. And while not near­ly all of this is about me, my friends are very im­por­tant to me so it af­fects me, es­pe­cial­ly if there’s noth­ing I can do about it. Which I hate.

Nor­mal­ly I want to talk about it non­stop (“AND AN­OTH­ER THING!”☝️😤) but for what­ev­er rea­son, this year I’ve sort of just, shut down a lot. I’ve talked in per­son to peo­ple I’m close with here in my town but even then, I of­ten skip over the de­tails be­cause I’m just so over­whelmed and ex­haust­ed. And not only have I not re­al­ly been talk­ing a lot, I’ve also disengaged. 

Most days af­ter I sign off work, I just want to sit on the couch and have a drink and play video games or watch TV and check out. It be­hooves me to ac­knowl­edge that I’m in­cred­i­bly priv­i­leged and lucky to be able to do so and that I have a qui­et, com­fort­able home in which to do this. For that I am in­cred­i­bly grateful. 

I know we’re all still here, think­ing about each oth­er, and we all still love each oth­er and care. We’re all worn out. We’re all very, very, very fuck­ing worn out. 

Life stuff is hard enough when you’re not liv­ing in an in­sane dystopi­an night­mare where the worst peo­ple in ex­is­tence are in charge of everything. 

I used to love en­gag­ing with peo­ple through this mag­i­cal lit­tle win­dow I can car­ry around in my pock­et but then those same worst peo­ple de­cid­ed to use it for things like 24-hour round the clock sen­sa­tion­al­ism and AI and cryp­to and just all the dumb­est most ob­nox­ious shit imaginable. 

I’m old enough to re­mem­ber life be­fore smart phones and so­cial me­dia and the in­ter­net, but I also re­mem­ber when all of that stuff was re­al­ly fun and enjoyable. 

And now it just feels like we can’t have any­thing nice any­more be­cause some­one out there wants to take lit­er­al­ly every sin­gle thing that ex­ists and rent it to us with ads and pro­mot­ers and merge every source of me­dia and en­ter­tain­ment and fun into one big un­re­mark­able blob that spits out stu­pid shit no­body wants and no­body asked for.

You know, like the up­com­ing Ebe­neez­er movie. Or pro­tein in everything. 

Any­way

I bet­ter end this or else I’ll start to ram­ble, which I’m prob­a­bly al­ready do­ing. I know y’all get it. You’re there too. 

I’m sor­ry this is our re­al­i­ty. It sucks. All we have is each oth­er. I haven’t for­got­ten about any of you and I gen­uine­ly en­joy hav­ing you in my life. Please don’t wor­ry, I’m not go­ing to hurt my­self and I’m not go­ing any­where, but to para­phrase Slurms MacKen­zie, I’m so tired of every­thing.

So very tired.
 

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2026 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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