the basic pH of concrete

i seem to be living in a concrete flat place without weather or life. i wish for the space and clouds and changeable sand, and lizards and spiders and flowering cacti of the desert instead, the dry heat and cold extremes killing me quickly. i can't hope for moss and ferns and streams and owls and wolves, that hurts too much to think about.

occasionally someone will try to rescue me. but the thing is, it's the whole structure, of me, of the world, of my life till now. so, i don't think i'm rescue-able, in that way. although i appreciate the gestures. especially when they spend time trying to remind me what it's like to be human. i know some lovely people, with lovely people that need them, that they don't find too much to stay with.  

i am too independent, with anxiety that makes me try to control by pushing away variables and depression that makes me boring.
but i also am so needy- no one wants to be around that for long.
my suffering is insufferable. 

so lately the edges of this concrete plain have called me. i look over into the black. 

people would be upset if i died. and angry if i didn't do anything to hold myself back. if i cut the ropes i've woven and tied around myself. if i just let go.
so it seems i'm supposed to just. abide. alone. not dying. it feels like such a waste of a life. 

i cannot figure out how to find reasons to live by myself. travel used to connect me to others, to a wider view. to joy sometimes.
i always knew i could end up like my mother, but without the lies that tethered her to a hurtful family and a homicidal religion, which also gave her a surface purpose she clung to. so i pushed that possibility aside, hoped for the best.
now things seem pointless. why do things to my living space that may burn down in the next fire. why make plans that i may never get to do. why work on projects, no one will see them, no one will care if my photos or journals burn. why seek out hikes that may not have a bathroom nearby or may have people who don't respect distance/mask wearing. why write people who don't write back (or who do, sometimes), especially when i have no joyful things to say to maybe make them smile. i'm just. a parking garage, really, a place to leave your things while you do something, then come back to get your things and leave again. 

and although i know i don't know what will come next, and i am wrong often, and change is the nature of life, still, i don't know how much more i can take of this. i know others have it so much worse. i try to help, i try to be heard, but it seems i'm not even saving a starfish or two with these desperate attempts. i don't know how much longer i can keep trying. the waste i am participating in is deafening and blinding and crushing. 

reason to believe

Never occurred to me that the song in my head these last few weeks was Rod Stewart.
Brain, you've let me down. Unsurprising.
But it's interesting, the last person who lied while I cried was my first love. It makes sense the last would too. Sad that that's the tidy story arc end of the rainbow. All my parent issues, wrapped up in a bow.
Anyway, this time there's no deep lesson. It's just that life is ultimately unfair for most people. Vulnerability is rewarded with abandonment, love rewarded with lies, and not everyone who tries hard wins. I'm not special here. I remain extremely lucky and privileged in almost all other ways.
I will say, this last partner was special. I've never been involved with someone with such an out of control personality disorder before. One I'd never before encountered personally, even practicing medicine. So. That's a new experience, and for the future, I'll be able to recognize it in patients hopefully, and maybe get them help before it's too late.
One good thing?
I was crying the other night after I'd received the postal service notice that the address had been changed, trying to brush my teeth through red teary eyes and super ugly-face-making and gasps for breath. And I stood there after, leaning on the sink, and breathed. And saw in the mirror someone I do now solidly believe is worthwhile. Lovable. Kissable and huggable. Someone I enjoy being with. Someone who didn't do anything wrong this time really- nothing I wasn't committed to admitting to and fixing. I never lied or covered anything up. I never gave up, not while there was still a response to my attempts. Even for a while after. Until the response was "stop."
I did my absolute best to love well. And when I didn't do it super well I tried to do it better, alone.
I think I could love better, with some love and challenge and support back in my direction too. I do believe I could. I don't believe I'll get that chance- which would break my heart if it wasn't well torn apart already. But I could love better. And I'd take that chance, because I don't think I could choose to avoid it- it is, however, going to take a lot for me to trust anyone like that again. My intuition about these things has always been very wrong.
I very much miss loving someone like that- this was my first real experience of putting everything out there, while looking forward to opening even more of myself. It felt so expansive and free and joyful to be that open and trusting- for the first time in my whole life! Even though it was clearly the wrong person to trust. And even though I never got the chance to fully engage, because that part, the growing that happens when two people are going in the same direction within a relationship, requires participation of the other person. I feel robbed. It seemed so close this time, I'd never felt that before. I guess I was also more wrong than ever before too.
But now at least, I feel that I am worth someone else's time and love, especially my own.
And I'm learning how to live a life I think is worth it, with maybe only friend-love, because that's really good too. Nourishing and supportive, fun and joyful, and is good compassion practice all by itself.

(JWWaterhouse)

Solo. Free.

It is so odd here. I feel, and felt all the way to getting this job and house, that I was nudged to end up here. Away from ICU. Away from Texas. Away from Washington. Away from Portland even. Or Santa Barbara. Definitely away from the midwest and the east coast. All the times I tried going back, making connections there, nothing ever stuck.
But I wonder if I've just run away to here because it felt safer, easier.
It's hard to know if I was doing my job for the last 2 years because it was my 'calling' and 'it was made for me,' or because I found the thing that was easiest for me. Laziness?
Because now I have this feeling I should be in a hospital, fighting for people's lives. Instead I'm doing some shitposting on the internet and a few nasal swabs. Calming a tiny number of people down in our community, which has kept itself relatively safe so far because our leaders are smarter than other places.
It's. Weird.
And I'm still so scared. And angry I've had to be alone through this. And grateful. Because I can fall apart or not, I'm in control of my daily routine, with no one to irritate me or ask me for more. And because if something happens to me, no one depends on me, so I can just go, my money and things might help others.
But have I done all I can? Have I? I'm not sure what else I'm capable of doing. My ICU skills are out of date, and my ability to handle stress is dramatically different than 12 years ago.
I'm so angry that I still, after all this, after all I've tried so hard and failed at, that I still have this desire to have this all mean something, to have it be for a reason, to be working toward a happy ending in my own life, soonish. This desire to make a difference that helps the world. And to have love involved, before it's too late. It might be too late.
Today I thought about how I used to believe love could change things, I used to believe it was alchemy, that it could heal. And I did notice it had changed me, some. And maybe that's the point.
But as much as it seems like someone has kept me safe so far, that the patterns I can almost see seem real-- it also seems fragile, random, lucky, like a mirage.
And I am very very much alone.

I thought I should write how things are going. Posterity and all that.
I want to quit and go live on a farm in Hawaii away from everyone.
I want to fly to Texas and work with my friends in hospitals that will be overrun in a week.
I found I can't read or write or meditate when I'm this anxious.
I found that my eyes absolutely hate computers and my phone.
Talking in person is less taxing because of non-verbal communication. On the phone I have to use more voice, more tone, more words, to convey empathy or compassion or humor or fierceness. By the end of a week of patient-care-by-phone (plus high anxiety) I'm more exhausted than OMT ever made me.
This is what medicine must have felt like hundreds of years ago. No tools, no protection, unclear who is sick and if they'll give it to you or even how, no effective treatment, no vaccine. Friends dying. Friends leading. Friends supporting each other. Strangers too.
This world is one. Borders are fictions. Healthcare, food, shelter, sanitation... all are things that we should help each other get. Billionaires are immoral. Millionaires are too, when there are children without food and homes and healthcare.
If we can stop, declare an emergency for human health, we can do the same for the environment- because it is our health too.

unity consciousness is pretty rough right about now

Today I continue to be broken. It's been a while.
Interestingly, I started to cry while I was washing my hands in front of my bathroom mirror, and somehow stepped outside myself and saw what maybe one of my friends would see. My rosacea was calmer than usual, my eyes were bright green like they are when I'm emotional, and my hair was gently purple grey amidst the brown, straighter than usual because it was slept on for too long. My eyes filled with tears and I thought, huh, poor baby, you're so sad still.
And the feeling I had a few years ago, that bit of compassion deeply felt for someone I care about but can't help, for someone that doesn't 'deserve' to be sad, who is just as special and not-special as everyone else, and who really worked hard and failed, arose.
I put my (now clean and dry) hands on my face and sort of hugged myself. While the tears spilled out and my face got ugly. But I could see still, underneath, as well as superficially, a person who learned how to love deeply quite recently, and was cast aside. A person who watched her mother die sad and lonely and grasping for love from outside reality. A person who's lost all her parental figures so far, to dementia, cancer, a religious cult, and misplaced blame. A person who's had every male parental figure and partner in her life she tried to love decide she wasn't worth their time. No one ever wanted to claim her as part of their family, their life.
A person who is therefore free, very privileged, with a job that might allow her to help a few people sometimes.
My best friend asked me yesterday (yes, there are three women who continue to be my reasons for living) what I'm going to do about this feeling of darkness I can't seem to shake. And I don't think there's anything I can do to change it. I'm seeing reality and it isn't good, and no medication or mushroom will stop wars, famines, environmental destruction, or even just people being selfish jerks to each other. I feel every day how we are all one. It just lets me see how everything is logarithmically building to a chaotic end.
Maybe all I can do is learn to be more skillful at seeing and functioning better in the dark.