I am somewhere between the rock, the hard place, and I can no longer tell the difference.
It used to be that I saw it as an obstacle. A small impasse. A transient bump in the road. Now it's an obstacle warranting a road map. A diversion that requires extra supplies with an undefined ETA.
I think its about being stuck in the emotional turmoil of feeling lost because half of me is absent. Grief manifesting as cement shoes. I keep coming back to how much that love can cost you. Can't it cost you the ability to move forward, or even move on. I'm not picky about the direction.
Good news for me there is some semblance of familiarity here. I have been here before. But I am certain I got up faster and got through it with less frictional resistance last time. Maybe this is what being burnt out feels like? Charred and immobile? Little things, like that passive aggressive email last night from the rescue that expects $75 surgeries, because, you know, that's what I did last time, and they are after all, "a rescue." I walked away. I ripped up their fair-weather-friend bank check and dumped them. I do that more often these days too. I just dump everyone. Seems that abandonment issue is more palatable when its me doing the abandoning.
I yearn for action items in my unenviable paralysis. A glue trap for my overly empathetic soggy soul.
The hands stay clamped around my face, specifically the vocal place. I feel compelled to blurt out to Molly that practice ownership gets the same mixed reviews, widely disbursed based on age and years invested, get out before you get in. Just like vet school, we all love the idea of it from the shoreline, but the further you get into those waters the more you consider abandoning the mission as some sort of delusional childhood fantasy. There is no inbetween. You cannot work for anyone. You cannot imagine paying someone else's rent to stay in your own skin and yet you can only perish via natural causes or sell out and hate yourself. But the real question is which way will you hate yourself less? And do you even have that emotion left in your purse?
True I couldn't ever do anything else, but, where did that choice become everything else?
I'll drink a lot of coffee today. Check the soles of my feet tomorrow for scars, char, soles, wings, or a toe tag.
I firmly believe that there is no greater loneliness than practice ownership. You cannot walk away without abandoning yourself. You cannot live with yourself no matter the decision you debate. You are stuck. You know it. It's why so many of us die here within the drudgery of work. We know nothing else. We can't comprehend how to redefine ourselves outside of our work. When its all you do its all you know.
