In a previous post (Isms), I mentioned in passing that I’ve evolved my own beliefs about the meaning/purpose of life in the meta sense, but did not elaborate upon what they were.
Here’s what I think is going on, to the best of my scrawny human brain’s capacity to understand such things. Continue reading
I learned last night that a singer who was important to me once has died. She died several months ago, as it turns out, but it was news to me. Or perhaps not. I had been thinking of her off and on over the past few weeks, or rather of her music, as first one of her songs, and then another drifted into and out of my mind for a few days. Somehow, I knew, so seeing the past tense in the search results did not shock or surprise me, as it so often has in recent years. Maybe I caught a fleeting glimpse of a headline awhile back, and put it away out of consciousness until I was ready for it to surface.
For a moment, when I saw the singer’s age, I thought, oh well, she was getting up there. Then I remembered my own age, which I often forget, and which is not much less than hers.
Music meant a lot to me during my depressed years Continue reading
I knew I was living in a protected bubble, where life AC (After COVID-19) was not so very different from life BC. I knew there were similar pockets throughout the U.S. While I was grateful for the relative safety of my situation, the sense of removal from the chaotic centers of the pandemic has its down side. Many in my suburban city refuse to change their behavior. They are worried enough to hoard toilet paper, but not enough to keep their distance in the checkout line. They don’t know anyone who died yet.
The disconnect between the quiet streets here, blooming with spring, and the fact that we are in the midst of a global tragedy that must change us in ways we can’t even begin to imagine felt increasingly surreal as I read of very different scenarios elsewhere – Italy, Spain, hospitals in New York. But still, I worked my past experiences with making do, getting through it, living with uncertainty, and sheltering in place from my own HSP overwhelm. I told myself calmly and rationally that the brightest and best-trained minds on the planet are working on this, Continue reading
I discovered living alone (without other humans, that is) when I was 16, and with the exception of brief sojourns with lovers or short-term transitional situations, it has been my lifestyle of choice ever since.
Living with other people was what I turned to when I first struck out on my own because it was what I had always done, but I soon realized the omnipresent relationships placed unmanageable demands on my energy. Sometime in my teens I redefined “home” as “the place I go to get away from people and rest.” And that is what home still is to me.
I rarely invite people in. If I feel social, I go out.
Most of my friendships are situational, the sum of proximity + time. That used to feel inadequate, but perhaps my expectations have evolved as I become a better friend to myself. The differences seem less important. Sometimes, as friendships deepen, I discover there are more similarities than I suspected. Continue reading
For anyone who is still thinking that stress is an attitude, and you just have to get over it, this article discusses the surprisingly extensive research on how traumatic childhood experiences impact lifelong health prognosis. The effects are pretty dramatic and apply to a lot of people. Certain interventions are also dramatic in their effectiveness, yet the findings have not been well-integrated into treatments, much less into prevention. What are health and human service professionals waiting for?
The truth is, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps will only take you as far as your ankles. For a list of traumas, open the Data and Statistics tab on this page, and click on ACEs Definitions. When you’re done with that, check out ACEs Prevalence, and then ask yourself whether we are really focusing on the right problems in our political lives.
This is the first record I ever bought with my own money. That was 44 years ago.
44 years. So endless. So fleeting. We don’t know where that time goes, but we know this: After awhile, this week, too, will go there.
Over the past few months, my life has been touched by death repeatedly. Cultural icons of my youth are dropping left and right, and I’ve learned a new hesitation to track down old friends and acquaintances. I’ve known elders who commented that everyone they knew was dead or dying, but I hadn’t expected to experience that in middle age. It has suddenly become difficult to ignore the inevitability of my own death, which I had fully expected to go on denying for another two or three decades, at minimum.
Continue reading
Thanks to my readers who have sent their comfort. It does help.
After the past two weeks of constant intensity, I’m feeling a little numb. I think I reached my limit, and my emotions automatically shut off to give me some rest. I’ve been cleaning the house, catching up on neglected work, donating the leftover medications to the animal shelter.
I can’t really get away from it, of course. The house is too quiet, and wherever I look, there are signs of the life with three cats I used to live. Winter came while I wasn’t looking. The cold lurks in corners, ready to envelop me the moment the heater ticks off.
The surviving cat has never been alone in the house in her entire life. The first time I left her, after… she ran and hid when I came home. She came out when she realized it was me. It was someone coming in the door that had frightened her. The last person who came to the house was the vet who euthanized her sister.
I always wondered how the cat dynamics would change when there were only two, but it never occurred to me I might lose two at the same time.
Mom and daughter will be cremated together. It wouldn’t surprise me if my emotions come back when the ashes are returned to me in a couple of weeks. I’m grounded in the physical realm – cremation has always seemed more final to me than death, as if, as long as the body which was the vehicle of our connection still exists, that connection is not really broken.
In the end, one cat died “naturally,” and I had the other euthanized when every breath became a struggle. Neither of these was a “good” death. Maybe there is no such thing.
I ran two races at once to win lives that were precious to me. My opponent was Death.
Death had a head start.
Sometimes I ran strong, hopeful and determined. Other times I faltered, exhausted, confused about where to go, feeling I had already lost. Always, whichever race I was running, I felt myself falling behind in the other.
In the end, Death won them both.
sensitive type 