Furry Little Life Saver

Wednesday, April 27, 2023

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I’ve had some okay days, and some terrible days. More or less together, making my bare minimum daily requirements. Surviving, and seeing reasons to survive.

I can smile and laugh. The pain is there, and sometimes it’s the only thing I can feel or see. But now it exists in a spectrum of emotion.

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Two days ago I had to say goodbye to my cat, Idris. She is alive and well, but there were allergy issues in the home and, after careful consideration, we had to give her up.

Idris came to me in a very dark time, soon after my ex wife left. Together we had two cats, Narknon and Jarvis, and when she left she took them, so they could be with the kids. After a few months of being on my own, I decided it was time to get a cat of my own. For seven years Idris was my companion, through the good and the bad, offering love and comfort when I felt like not a soul in the world cared.

It is no exaggeration to say she saved my life. I have never been prone to suicidal thoughts, but I am type one diabetic. I lived alone. In deeper points of depression it was hard to do anything, and my self care was always out of reach. A diabetic who can’t take care of their glucose levels is in danger.

Idris needed feeding, so I got up to feed her, and when I was up I would then take care of myself. She needed me to change her litter, so I would get moving, taking care of one small thing that led into another, then another, giving me momentum. She needed to be brushed, and when I brushed her she would be very affectionate, showing me that at least one person cared.

If I hadn’t had an insistent, furry little creature asking for food or comfort, I might not have taken care of my own needs. And for a diabetic, medical needs can mean either life or death.

Since she left, I have seen her in every corner of the house. I expect to hear her jumping up onto the bed when I lie down for the night. I hear her asking rudely for food, acting as if she was starving no matter how long it had been since her last meal. I can feel her lying on my arm as I drift off to sleep.

I’ve done some difficult things in my life. Saying goodbye to a beloved pet is one of the hardest, all the more so because they don’t understand why you have to part ways.

I’m going to miss her.

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What are my qualifications? None, except for my own experience and a desire to help. Going back to Doctor Who, “I am an idiot … passing through, helping out.” I hope my own struggle with my darkness can help you with yours, or understand the struggle of someone you love.

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Life before death

Strength before weakness

Journey before destination

No Good People

Monday, April 10, 2023

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I have said many times that I am not a good person. I self identify as an asshole who is doing their best not to let other people realize that I am, so I lean as hard in the other direction as possible.

I talked with a good friend recently, during a crisis of mine. I told her I was not a good person. She disagreed vehemently and said that she should know because she’s known me for about thirty years. She’s also an ex, and if our friendship has lasted that long AND survived a breakup, there may be something to her claim.

More importantly, she said that the idea of a good person is a bit of a myth. There may be one or two genuinely good people out there, but most of us are kind of selfish, kind of greedy, and kind of mean - qualities that can very easily tip us toward bad under the right circumstances. No one is good. No one is evil. We’re just people trying to survive.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn probably said it best.

“The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.” 

Touching on Doctor Who again, in the Matt Smith episode A Town Called Mercy, an alien known as Kahler-Jex - a known war criminal - has settled in a human town on Earth. He has done everything he can to improve the lives of the people around him. The balance of his past sins and his current service are the crux of the episode and acts as a sharp parallel to the Doctor himself, whose hands are certainly not clean. While it is a simplified view of our own struggle, it is apt. Our lives don’t keep the good and the bad so neatly separated and defined.

Does the good Jex has done erase the bad? Does it tip the scales for him toward being a "good" person?

I’m not religious. I don’t believe in absolute categories of good and evil the same way a person of faith might. But I do believe there are good things a person can do, based subjectively on what will benefit themselves, their circle, their species, and their planet. Likewise I think there are less than ideal things that people can do - that we ALL do - that detract from those same goods. And maybe I believe in evil in the sense that there are some people who are aware of the horrible impact of their actions and choose to persist in them.

It’s good to be proactively aware of someone’s peanut allergy.

It’s dangerous but not evil to give peanuts to someone you didn’t know was allergic.

It’s evil to leave peanuts in food knowing that the person about to eat it is allergic and do nothing to stop them from eating it.

We’re all kinda shitty. Being aware of your own failings and actively trying to fight them and improve as a person is, perhaps, the closest thing we can get to being truly “good.”

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What are my qualifications? None, except for my own experience and a desire to help. Going back to Doctor Who, “I am an idiot … passing through, helping out.” I hope my own struggle with my darkness can help you with yours, or understand the struggle of someone you love.

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Life before death

Strength before weakness

Journey before destination

Self Loathing

Sunday, April 9, 2023

More and more I identify with Vincent van Gogh, or at least how he is portrayed in the beautiful Doctor Who episode where Matt Smith’s Doctor and Amelia Pond visit the painter. The good that I experience in life, big or small, doesn’t detract from the bad. And vice versa. My highs and lows don’t get flattened into a line of okayness. They come and go, and I know that I will get to enjoy them, in a sense, no matter what came before or after.

The world is full of unbearable pain and suffering, and yet we find a way to bear it.

The world is full of incomprehensible beauty and joy, too.

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Sometimes I still hate myself, although I’m beginning to see how much of a mistake that is. Not a mistake because it’s not “good” for me. A mistake because it is a misunderstanding of the things about me that I have trouble accepting.

My negative emotions are all ways that my body is trying to protect me. Interestingly, even my “self-destructive” or “self-sabotaging” behaviors are actually self-defense mechanisms that are misfiring, or being misused. Push people away so that you can control how they enter and exit your life. Hurt yourself so that you know when the hurt will come and not be surprised by it. These are misapplications of a desire to keep you safe, keep me safe.

But do we hate the thing that’s trying to help? If a loved one is doing their best to be on your side and protect you, do you loathe and despise them? Even if they are actually making things worse, you thank them and then tell them they don’t need to do what they’re doing anymore.

I’m trying something. Not sure how it will work. I absorbed it through social media, so I can’t even say where it came from. But it goes something like this:

1. Identify what it is about yourself that you hate.

2. Identify what that thing is doing - the negative impact.

3. Identify what that thing is trying to do - the protective intent.

4. Try to feel it inside your body, as tension, heat, cold, pain, etc.

5. Acknowledge the behavior and thank it for trying to keep you safe.

6. Thank it and tell it that you’re safe now, and it can rest.

7. Feel around to see if the thing is still there. If so, gently repeat the process.

We have to feel the feelings or they remain inside us, messing us up in unexpected ways. I have trouble feeling them in my body, so that’s a challenge for me, but it’s an interesting exercise.

I’m trying not to hate the things about me that are less than ideal. I still do - I have a lot of misunderstanding to undue - but I think this is helping.

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What are my qualifications? None, except for my own experience and a desire to help. Going back to Doctor Who, “I am an idiot … passing through, helping out.” I hope my own struggle with my darkness can help you with yours, or understand the struggle of someone you love.

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Life before death

Strength before weakness

Journey before destination