For years I had managed to avoid grasping the nettles but was still always being cut and scratched by their stingers. I'd become hyper-sensitive to their poison and day by day I came to fear and loathe them more.
Worse, I was now starving. The garden had been neglected for so long that the nettles had overrun the land, aggressively crowding out my crops. So there I was. Marooned in this enormous bed of nettles, with barely room to move. It had reached the point where I was sure I would perish alone and friendless amongst all this hostile nature.
So, with little left to lose, I finally grasped the nettle. What else was there to do? I gripped a smallish one, not entirely innocuous, but less severe-looking than the others.
No pain I'd experienced in my life hurt compared with that first moment. The needle-hairs pierced my skin. I had the sensation that they were pushing down though sinew and muscle, almost to the bone, even through the bone. My hand was engulfed by fiery heat. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I cried out in pain.
But there was no-one there to hear me my cries. My friends had long left me to my bed of nettles.
Affected by the poison, I felt worse than ever, and I berated myself for being so foolish. What on earth had prompted me to touch the awful thing? I should have just kept going on as I had been, keeping as still as possible to avoid the spines, hoping someone or something would miraculously come to my aid. But it was too late now. I was finished - starving, bleeding and now poisoned. More miserable than ever.
Not that it mattered. Pain is just the body's warning that damage is being done. If I was lucky it would hasten my demise, saving me from what a slow death of malnutrition. So I might as well keep on grasping them and see what happened.
So that's what I did, challenging The Reaper to claim me as one of his own. And, of course, I kept being stung, my hands red raw. In this state of bloody oblivion, on a whim - or perhaps it was a moment of inspiration borne of desperation or delerium - I tore the plant into pieces. After all, what was the worst that could happen now? I was already doomed.
The small leaves reminded me of spinach. What would happen if I tasted it, I wondered carelessly?
So I boiled a few leaves over a small fire to make a soup which would, with a little luck, be my Last Supper. If it was as poisonous as I suspected, I would be spared this vale of tears and go to join the rest of the plant in the Cosmic Compost Heap.
But it actually tasted good. As they say, hunger makes the best sauce. So I prepared some more. Then the irony of it all struck me like a gong. Here I was, standing in the middle of what I'd seen as an godforsaken field of noxious weeds and the whole time within them lay the roots of my salvation!
Not that it was all plain sailing for once my initial hunger was appeased I found the taste foreign, even disconcerting in its strangeness. But it was ok. I was still unskilled at picking the leaves and tops, and continued to be stung by the sharp needles protecting its precious flesh as I harvested them. More than once I was tempted to retreat to the familiar, to my accustomed state of fear and inertia.
But each time I drove myself to prepare just one more meal to - if nothing else - see what would happen. Gradually I started to feel better ... the nettles that had been destroying me were now making me stronger.
My mind clearing with new-found health, I learnt how to pick the leaves with more safety. In time I'd cleared enough of the plants to make a little space around me, and I could now move more freely with fewer stings.
Much to my surpise, people started to drop by to taste my nettle soups. By then I'd cleared enough of the weeds to cut a path through the field to the outside world.
I experimented with various recipes so I could make prepare tastier dinners for myself and my new-found friends. I planted companion crops amongst the nettle beds, scavenging the seeds on the outskirts of the field, which I'd never previously visited out of fear. I found that chives and parsley nicely augmented the unusual nettle flavour. I was no longer afraid of the nettles, and even grew to love them, for they had made me what I am today.
Life continued to improve, day by day ... although every now and then, in complacent and careless moments, I still freeze in pain from their sting. One day I hope to maintain enough focus to never be hurt by them again ...