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 My ICU skills are out of date, and my ability to handle stress is dramatically different than 12 years ago.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.

the end of the fantasy

20 years ago I had to change my whole belief system. Makes sense I would have to do it again. The disappointment, though, is that I thought the one I'd built was pretty good. Less harmful, no shame or guilt other than when I actually hurt someone. But I kept all that mystical bullshit. That was my downfall.
There is no intuition, destiny, manifestation.
It's all just random.
Some people get to experience stability, safety, love, family, trust... and some don't. It's not deserving or not deserving, there is no one running this shit, being fair or not fair, or judging or punishing.
It's just random, chance. No cause or effect anyone could ever see the whole pattern of. There probably isn't a pattern, not an organized one anyway.
And overall, people are on the balance, bad, and the world is burning.
Haiti didn't get to rebuild well, Puerto Rico got left behind again despite being part of the US, environmental degradation and pollution continues unabated, and Australia is burning like the Amazon, Indonesia, the american West, and parts of Europe.
Things I've done to help didn't do much.
Learning how to love well, as well as I could, one-sided, didn't change anything in the end. It was just another incidence of me being thrown away, as usual. Not even personal, really, except it's horrible that it took me this many times of ending up as someone else's garbage to realize the reason it hurt was because my belief system was wrong. I shouldn't be surprised when love doesn't get to be experienced by everyone- there's no reason I should be one of those that get to have it. Seriously. I don't need to keep supporting a 'specialness' complex about myself. I'm not a goddamned unicorn. There are a few people like that- who are loved. But all relationships end in tragedy, so I can't even be envious- except it must be nice to get to experience that. I wish I were one of those, but it just didn't happen.
The only thing I can aspire to, is to do less than average harm. Because I still do harm. No matter what I do or try or work on. But I still think that I want to have done my best to not hurt people, to help if I can, even though I can't most of the time and I fail so much. There's no reason for this, I don't believe anything particularly, other than that's how I want to be. I do believe that kindness is better than unkindness. And if I fail, then, I'm still no worse than most.
It's the disappointment that is breaking me. I hope it subsides with time. That's the only hope I have left I think. I wanted things to be true that aren't. It's not the first time, nor the tenth, but it is the last. It is good to let the fairy tales go at last. Now I can just live, without hope, without worry, without further disappointment. There's no prevention or mitigation or reversal. The world is dying, and it's our fault. Men keep killing people. Things keep happening, changing. And there is nothing I can do that matters to any of it. So.
At this point it's just caring for burned koalas. Throwing unmelted starfish back into the sea one at a time. Giving dying bees warm sugar water.

ancestors

it had been so long. and everyone showed up.
since Samhain i hadn't heard any spirits at all. i feel so alone so often.
keep your eyes open she said, serious, my mom's echo. maybe he? i couldn't figure out who, different energy, large, solid, sure, very old, somehow proud of me and interested to see me do well.
had started out wondering if i should just go straight down my mom's path after all. ask for a child, throw myself into it. to pass on everything. but that's what i've been trying to heal instead, to choose differently. hoping by listening more, practicing more, loving more, being more open, staying open, feeling more, that things can be different, better, good, beautiful even. joyful. together. woven together.
they let me yell at them. for leaving, for being bad at loving me, for making me learn the hard and slow ways, for making themselves sick and then leaving me alone. all four of them.
i understand i have learned so much with them gone.
i understand this time i have learned so much in 2+ months. pain focuses me. horrible as it is.
i understand i am practicing. every day. with someone(s) new.
i am so grateful to do the job i do. it allows and forces me (i chose it/keep choosing it to force me) to practice.
i begged for some hope. to have it not be for nothing. and of course it's never wasted. practicing love. i still want reassurance, hope, a vision, a dream, to keep my sails full.
i tried to reconcile if he chooses to throw me away, like the fool, to be a widow, except to be like my mom, losing her person because of his choice mostly, and how i could do it better. hence the thought of children, or fostering. and yet. that path is very likely ugly without dedicated help. without a teammate.
the problem now is not knowing, what he'll choose.
even knowing i'd have to keep practicing every day either way, to not loose hope or focus or perseverance, for life, and that it will still end anyway, regardless, but not by choice, even if all ended up going in a direction i'd prefer.
my grandfather's mistakes and love and being partly right- they haven't made fools of me. but so far, they've been fools.
bozena's mistakes and teaching me how actual love feels. thank heaven for her understanding and persistence and not giving up on me, not entirely.
my mom's horrid beliefs, but such love. teaching me to laugh and question.
my grandmother's insistence on shame, and love, and that discipline didn't have to mean not-love.
is it that i have to let go and let things be, to 'we'll see' my way through this?
it is so hard letting go of knowing of shaping of even trying to paint.
it felt good to be talked to.
practice.
keep your eyes open.
we love you. love you. love.