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juushikaI drafted this a week or so ago; writing it was so upsetting that it then just ... sat there. Here is a perpetual concern: if being forced to recount trauma increases the risk of PTSD, do I take refuge in my habitual memory loss and the fact that it's exacerbated by my mental illness or do I, in the interest of maintaining any record of my life, record the endless shitty things that keep happening, at the risk of remembering and, worse, internalizing them? The difference, I suppose, is that voluntarily recounting trauma can allow for processing and emotional release—but I never know the difference between my personal desires and external expectations which I have internalized, aka: if I am forcing myself.
Anyway. Watching roadkill occur wasn't PTSD-levels-of-traumatic; but it affected me profoundly and personally, and was soon followed by a spider incident, and occurred around various petty grievances (see audiobook woes below) and larger grievances (extended family drama alluded to below) and the much larger umbrella of my dad's diagnosis and a full-blown depressive episode. So this is all I have to record; this, and occasional book reviews: things have been an unmitigated hellfire. It's not great reading or, as it turns out, very enjoyable to write. But here is that post which was sitting in my drafts.
CW for animal death.
A few days ago I planned a long walk for the height of "lots of stressful things happen around the house" time that I could remove myself from it for a few hours. I brought an audiobook (my tablet has been crashing every 10mins when listening to Overdrive audio via headphones! why is this my life!) and an ebook to read on a nearby public bench. I managed to spend almost two hours out of the house. I even found a new road to take—a valuable commodity out on the edge of town, where there's huge chunks of private land: so much landscape, but nowhere public to walk. But at the very apex, right after finding this new route, I saw a squirrel I'd been watching dart across the road and get hit by a car which drove off without stopping.
The squirrel pulled itself off the road; the car behind slowed and the driver rolled down the window and said to a shocked Juu, comically frozen by the side of the road, "It's okay to be okay." Upon reflection, he probably meant on an existential level, and he was clearly awkward and just trying to ... say anything, make any gesture. But I told him, "thank you, but it's obviously not," and I meant the squirrel, but it's also true on an existential level. He drove off; I crossed the road; the squirrel was on the shoulder, upside down, open eyes skyward, dead. Its fur was beautiful in the breeze.
Making an animal's death all about my feelings is profoundly hypocritical in the face of my feelings about human interactions with the non-human world, especially considering my reaction to the driver that hit a squirrel and then drove off without even slowing. (What did you expect them to do, Juu? CPR?—I guess for anything at all, for some indication that it mattered.) They were as selfish as I would be, if I made roadkill evidence of how shitty shitty shit my life is. The other extreme is a fruitless "all humanity is a blight on the larger world; our afternoon commute is literal, physical murder to wildlife"—which is something I believe even on days when I don't witness it, but which is also yelling at clouds.
So it's both, it's neither. It's not okay, on an existential level. The days I actively work to improve turn out not to be okay; the squirrel is dead; about the time that Devon and I have the option to leave this incredibly stressful, toxic environment, things will start getting really bad for my dad; it took me 10 years to recover from the last time I was this sick, and so I am as terrified of consequences as of the things themselves. Tired, tired, tired.
As well as a probably-very-healthy population of squirrels, this neighborhood also has a population of vultures; on a greater, more existential level, some things are okay. But not for that squirrel. Not for my family, or for me.
Anyway. Watching roadkill occur wasn't PTSD-levels-of-traumatic; but it affected me profoundly and personally, and was soon followed by a spider incident, and occurred around various petty grievances (see audiobook woes below) and larger grievances (extended family drama alluded to below) and the much larger umbrella of my dad's diagnosis and a full-blown depressive episode. So this is all I have to record; this, and occasional book reviews: things have been an unmitigated hellfire. It's not great reading or, as it turns out, very enjoyable to write. But here is that post which was sitting in my drafts.
CW for animal death.
A few days ago I planned a long walk for the height of "lots of stressful things happen around the house" time that I could remove myself from it for a few hours. I brought an audiobook (my tablet has been crashing every 10mins when listening to Overdrive audio via headphones! why is this my life!) and an ebook to read on a nearby public bench. I managed to spend almost two hours out of the house. I even found a new road to take—a valuable commodity out on the edge of town, where there's huge chunks of private land: so much landscape, but nowhere public to walk. But at the very apex, right after finding this new route, I saw a squirrel I'd been watching dart across the road and get hit by a car which drove off without stopping.
The squirrel pulled itself off the road; the car behind slowed and the driver rolled down the window and said to a shocked Juu, comically frozen by the side of the road, "It's okay to be okay." Upon reflection, he probably meant on an existential level, and he was clearly awkward and just trying to ... say anything, make any gesture. But I told him, "thank you, but it's obviously not," and I meant the squirrel, but it's also true on an existential level. He drove off; I crossed the road; the squirrel was on the shoulder, upside down, open eyes skyward, dead. Its fur was beautiful in the breeze.
Making an animal's death all about my feelings is profoundly hypocritical in the face of my feelings about human interactions with the non-human world, especially considering my reaction to the driver that hit a squirrel and then drove off without even slowing. (What did you expect them to do, Juu? CPR?—I guess for anything at all, for some indication that it mattered.) They were as selfish as I would be, if I made roadkill evidence of how shitty shitty shit my life is. The other extreme is a fruitless "all humanity is a blight on the larger world; our afternoon commute is literal, physical murder to wildlife"—which is something I believe even on days when I don't witness it, but which is also yelling at clouds.
So it's both, it's neither. It's not okay, on an existential level. The days I actively work to improve turn out not to be okay; the squirrel is dead; about the time that Devon and I have the option to leave this incredibly stressful, toxic environment, things will start getting really bad for my dad; it took me 10 years to recover from the last time I was this sick, and so I am as terrified of consequences as of the things themselves. Tired, tired, tired.
As well as a probably-very-healthy population of squirrels, this neighborhood also has a population of vultures; on a greater, more existential level, some things are okay. But not for that squirrel. Not for my family, or for me.
