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. 

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.