Alone in the Jungle

Alone in the jungle.. How often does everyone else feel like this? I suspect, (dare I say, hope?), that it is most. Otherwise I think that I might truly be all alone in this deserted jungle? (And how crappy would that be!)? Why do we, (or, at least me?), seek solace in knowing the rest of the boat is in the same boat with us?

Day One, USMMA plebe line-up. Second Company 1987

Maybe the grown up me just hasn't totally accepted the rest of me as "all I need?"

Why do so many of us feel so alone? And, with that, isn't that exactly why so many love their pets so intensely? If that presumption holds true then why do I feel so alone, and all alone, in my profession? I have somewhere along the way learned that I am less abandoned and more appreciated by my clients than my colleagues. (How many other vets feel this way?). I know there are vets out there sighing a sad despair-a-tive exhale with that admission. The vet profession has become a gaggle of cohorts all protecting each other from the demons lurking in the self prescribed pink juice. There are collectives who have your back regardless of your shortcomings, mistakes, or inadequacies. You just have to be a vet and they have your back. Right? Well, maybe for the other vets. But, for the small group of us not in the in-crowd it's an existence of cosmic outpost inhabitancy. You are really, really alone if you pick your clients side over your professions allegiance. What if you are the poor Schmuck who still likes your patients better than your clients and your colleagues,,, well, then you are totally fucked. What if on top of all of that you are a vegetarian,,, well, there isn't a category for that, fucked, alone, pariah. Great. 

Droog shelter, Alexandria Ukraine, 2022

That's me, totally unequivocally alone. And yet I still sit here in my dingy throwing out life preservers to the gulls passing by offering quiet applause and anonymous cheers. Last week I spoke to an internal medicine expert who said to me, "I wish you luck, this one is not going to be easy, or make you any friends." Thanks, just what I needed to hear. 

Storm, blissful in the buttercups

I wonder if my legacy will just become the Ralph Nader of the vet med profession? I wonder if I will take any kind of joy in that title? Can't anyone else see that our misery might just lie right next to our denial? Why aren't we all just on our patients side, if you know we need to pick a side? Why not them? I think it's because the us gets in the way of the them? Doesn't anyone but me see they are one in the same if you just open your lids a bit more? Who says you can't do everything for them, our patients, and not have it come back to you in spades? Or, I just have to convince myself that alone is ok, I'm not going to like myself if I try to make my colleagues like me. I'm not going to have patients that purr, wag, or cuddle me in those quiet places that we spend together. They look at me with enough gratitude to make up the chasm of difference that the profession can't fill. it is enough, it has always been enough.

Here's to being alone, saving every goddamn blocked cat and pyometra dog that my colleagues turn away. Those dogs and cats deserve a chance, a palliative nuance of possibility, and an advocate who's lonely. 

Always kiss the cat goodnight

Here's to intention having merit. Self-preservation being empowering, and lastly here's to all of the vets out there throwing stones and not able to look in the mirror at the faces of the skeletons in their own closets. 

Chief Mate CS Global Mariner, 4th of July cookout.

Here's to the Fourth of July meaning just a little bit more to us that feel alone, and a world of possibilities if we all start living a life of freedom instead of loneliness.