Saying goodbye
I have the hardest time in the world saying goodbye. I never learned how to do it gracefully. So, more often than not, I just don't do it at all. Even when I need to, I avoid it at all cost.
I'm sitting in my little wild back patio, that I just spent a good twelve hours weed whacking into submission. Its still scruffy and wild, with a pile of leaves from last year and all the mint and lemon balm I whacked sitting smack dab in the middle of it. But I love it. I love wild and scruffy and imperfect. It makes me feel at home in a way newatness never could.
So, I'm sitting here with my cup of coffee, and Sitha on my lap. She was on my shoulders a minute ago, but that wasn't garnering her enough attention, so she climbed down to my lap. And is sitting here purring, trying to convince me I don't want to be wasting my hands on typing. And I've got tears streaming down my face. Lord help me if my neighbors come out. I'm crying because I have to say goodbye to this little pill bug kitty sometime soon, and I don't know how to do it. She's dying, though it's not that obvious yet. I've been waiting for her symptoms to get worse, wondering when I'm going to have to make the decision to kill her. And its hard for me to imagine.
I don't live in a world where its OK for things to just leave. Not things I care about. Where it's OK for me to leave.
And therein lies the crux of my issue. While I don't know how to say goodbye, I also don't know how to stay. I crave the ability to just leave. But it kills me to think about it. There's a young crow that lives in my backyard. He knows me. When I'm sitting out here, he's often patrolling his territory, flying from one tree in the backyard to another. Every now and then he'll drop something near me. When I look up, he's staring intently down at me. As soon as he sees me looking, he caws and flies away.
I think about moving, and him never seeing me again, and I get nervous, and sad. It's ridiculous. The crow might be amused by me, but he could not give two flying fucks if I went away and never came back. But I imagine he could, and my imagining makes me sad.
Which would normally be fine. Realizing your imagination is creating false scenarios is a good thing. But I am, in many ways, ruled by my imagination. My reason might be aware, but my actions are too often dictated by what I imagine to be real. So, imagining anothers pain at my actions too often immobilizes me with fear and indecision.
This has always been the case. In order to create pain in others in the course of actions I HAVE to take, I need to circumvent my imagination. Often this just takes enough time for the situation to become completely untenable. My own misery has to be potent enough to force my survival reflex to kick in. Other times, I have to force myself to be completely cold toward the situation. I have to be heartless about it to take any action.
That's ridiculous. And so unhealthy. But I think about the times in my life where I've had to say goodbye, and they all follow the same pattern. I don't know where the pattern started, but it had to have been very young. I've had this issue for as long as I could remember.
In some ways, dealing with Sitha being sick has been good for me. I've been forced to deal with grief, instead of run away from it. I've always been worried that I would be capable of abandoning something or someone in pain, to spare myself the grief. But apparently I'm capable of staying when I have to stay, even when I desperately want to leave.
Now to become capable of leaving when I need to, not when I have to.
I'm sitting in my little wild back patio, that I just spent a good twelve hours weed whacking into submission. Its still scruffy and wild, with a pile of leaves from last year and all the mint and lemon balm I whacked sitting smack dab in the middle of it. But I love it. I love wild and scruffy and imperfect. It makes me feel at home in a way newatness never could.
So, I'm sitting here with my cup of coffee, and Sitha on my lap. She was on my shoulders a minute ago, but that wasn't garnering her enough attention, so she climbed down to my lap. And is sitting here purring, trying to convince me I don't want to be wasting my hands on typing. And I've got tears streaming down my face. Lord help me if my neighbors come out. I'm crying because I have to say goodbye to this little pill bug kitty sometime soon, and I don't know how to do it. She's dying, though it's not that obvious yet. I've been waiting for her symptoms to get worse, wondering when I'm going to have to make the decision to kill her. And its hard for me to imagine.
I don't live in a world where its OK for things to just leave. Not things I care about. Where it's OK for me to leave.
And therein lies the crux of my issue. While I don't know how to say goodbye, I also don't know how to stay. I crave the ability to just leave. But it kills me to think about it. There's a young crow that lives in my backyard. He knows me. When I'm sitting out here, he's often patrolling his territory, flying from one tree in the backyard to another. Every now and then he'll drop something near me. When I look up, he's staring intently down at me. As soon as he sees me looking, he caws and flies away.
I think about moving, and him never seeing me again, and I get nervous, and sad. It's ridiculous. The crow might be amused by me, but he could not give two flying fucks if I went away and never came back. But I imagine he could, and my imagining makes me sad.
Which would normally be fine. Realizing your imagination is creating false scenarios is a good thing. But I am, in many ways, ruled by my imagination. My reason might be aware, but my actions are too often dictated by what I imagine to be real. So, imagining anothers pain at my actions too often immobilizes me with fear and indecision.
This has always been the case. In order to create pain in others in the course of actions I HAVE to take, I need to circumvent my imagination. Often this just takes enough time for the situation to become completely untenable. My own misery has to be potent enough to force my survival reflex to kick in. Other times, I have to force myself to be completely cold toward the situation. I have to be heartless about it to take any action.
That's ridiculous. And so unhealthy. But I think about the times in my life where I've had to say goodbye, and they all follow the same pattern. I don't know where the pattern started, but it had to have been very young. I've had this issue for as long as I could remember.
In some ways, dealing with Sitha being sick has been good for me. I've been forced to deal with grief, instead of run away from it. I've always been worried that I would be capable of abandoning something or someone in pain, to spare myself the grief. But apparently I'm capable of staying when I have to stay, even when I desperately want to leave.
Now to become capable of leaving when I need to, not when I have to.
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