Life Is Going On

I have been blessedly busy, which has kept me from dwelling on things I know would only send me down a rabbit hole lined with razor blades. The new job is going well so far, and it is something I can see myself doing for a year or two while I figure out my next move(s). Everyone in the office is nice, calm, patient, and helpful, and I don't yet have any tasks that are so impossible that I take endless blows to my slowly rebuilding self-esteem while I try and fail to figure out how to complete them. For the first time this year, things feel like they're calming down on the job front, perhaps settling into a steady rhythm that, instead of making me feel like I am trapped and going nowhere, give me a sense of much needed security and a chance to repair some confidence that has been leaking from me. I still have time in my day to take care of myself, and time to pursue projects that could take me where I've always wanted to be. The trick is reminding myself that things come to fruition when they do, and the moments when I feel like a failure may not always be accurate, especially if those moments only make me regress.

Rita has been gone for a few days. Well, gone and yet not, because we got her ashes back from the crematorium along with an impression of her paw print in plaster. Her paws had been riddled with cysts and sores for months, and they hurt her so badly that she hadn't been able to do much walking or standing by the end, which made her other health issues run rampant. The vet techs cleaned off one of the paws that hadn't been as affected for the paw print, but there was one small hair of hers that got stuck in the plaster. I had been crying, seeing the box that had the urn the held her remains, and then a little more when I saw the impression, until I noticed the hair. Something about fur, maybe because it gets everywhere, makes me laugh a bit. I've had that experience with other dogs that have lived out the length of their time on Earth, finding fur of theirs in random places after they've gone, and it always brings up a rush of emotions: loss of a friend, happiness that something of theirs is still around, and weird amusement that even if when they're gone, they're still managing to shed enough fur that it ends up in my shoes. What has been telling is that, even though I miss her so much and the house is not quite the same without her, I don't find myself so absorbed in loss that I can't stop crying. That means that, hard as it was, it was also the right choice; she had been in so much pain, and was so old that pouring money into treatment and drugs into her system would not mean much chance of recovery, and letting her go was the responsible, but more importantly, the kind thing to do.

And so life goes on. The differences between last week (where I spent an afternoon feeling every second that ticked by as a punch to the gut while in such a raw emotional state that I'm amazed I am still alive) to now (where I am sitting at a desk on a slow morning and sipping tea and feeling more at ease knowing that I don't have to worry about how to make a car insurance payment, a phone payment, buy gas, and still be able to eat at least once a day) are staggering. What bothers me is that, regardless of the events of my life being helpful or harmful, I still feel like I'm defining God as someone more like Santa Claus or some perverted idea of a Mythical Accountant, someone who is always watching me, evaluating my behavior and my choices, and deciding my future for me based on the results. I feel like I have to provide proof of my worth, rather than feeling like I'm worth the breath in my lungs by default. It's tiring to constantly feel like I have to fight for the simple moments of peace.