mood, self-analysis, awkward realities (--)
The worst part of all this is the fact I can feel my emotions towards my stepdad pre-emptively closing off, on the assumption that he's doomed and if I start hoping for better I'll just be setting myself up for more hurt. It's just safer if I practice stopping caring now, and thinking of all the ways it's "fine, no, really, it's fine" if we lose him.
mood, self-analysis, awkward realities (--)
I lost my dad suddenly, after his 2nd heart attack. My stepbrother's Stage 5 cancer came out of the blue, and then months later, he was gone out of the blue.
There were signs of problems with my two college girlfriends, but they both broke up with me out of what I thought at the time was the blue. One day fine, the next bam, gone.
mood, self-analysis, awkward realities (--)
I made my first boyfriend promise me we wouldn't do that to each other, during a really rough period where our house supposedly had bedbugs and we were stressing out at each other. But bam, it happened anyway, and I haven't really been the same since, I think.
mood, self-analysis, awkward realities (--)
And then when I was still in recovery from that, and thought Kristy and Jessie were friends and we were slowly working out our differences... I decide to stand up for myself in a dispute and bam, it escalates, I have a scary self-destructive episode in front of them, it's all over. And then I find out there were problems for years that they never told me about.
mood, self-analysis, awkward realities (--)
So it's kinda fucking hard to do the "hope for the best" thing. I don't really have a coping strategy other than obsessively looking at all the things that could go horribly wrong, steeling myself for them all at once, and keeping an emotional bug-out bag packed for the day when it all explodes.
And then that fucking cat got lost. Bam. And everybody said "oh, he'll wander back." Peg even cast spells for his safe return.
Nothing.
mood, self-analysis, awkward realities (--)
And I can't. I love him. Like I still love little Umbra and will always be sad when every little black shadow turned out not to be him, or when I see that damned catnip toy he loved sitting unslobbered on Peggy's altar. And like I will keep loving Peg even if she goes and dies on me or leaves. And like I still love Rik. And I still love Kristy and Jessie, damn their eyes.
mood, self-analysis, awkward realities (--)
But every time I lose something, I get a little colder and a little more comfortable with the layer of permafrost on me. It hurts. I can't open up like I used to. I used to find comfort in friends, in spiritual stuff, in identity dissolution, in kink stuff... and I just can't anymore. There's a crust of permanent anxiety there. And I can endure, like I do everything else. But I can't pretend I haven't done the same letting go process with my own self.
mood, self-analysis, awkward realities (--)
Heh. I even have a little mental flowchart for the deaths of my parents, Peggy, and myself, in every remaining theatrical Act of my life, and what to do in each possible permutation. And I think about Plans A, B, and C and where they would leave me every single day.
Most of them end up with me alone in the cheapest possible American city, gleefully eating myself to death. :p There is ONE Good End path where Peg and I become Real Comics People.
mood, self-analysis, awkward realities (--)
And you know what? There's some part of me OK with the Bad End, almost looking forward to it. When I lived with Kristy and Jessie, I used to spend a lot of time pondering where this would all go, and how it would all end in a tragic parting no matter what happened. And I kinda wondered, "Huh. What if I just kinda wrecked everything and aimed for dying with as few emotional connections as possible, just to spare everybody and myself?"
I'm gettin there!
counterpoint, self-analysis, awkward realities (+)
On the other hand, I say all this morbid stuff... but you gotta put it in context. I've ALSO been preparing for my "imminent" death since I was 13 years old, and braced for the "inevitable" collapse of my economic viability since I was 22.
So yeah. Take all this anxiety with a big chunk of salt. I am just, as @anthracite constantly reminds me, a big worrywart. =(n)_(n);=
There was even life after Seattle. Good life. Weird life.
mood, self-analysis, awkward realities (--)
And just as I was going through the not-necessarily-consensual process of doing what I had to do to deal, switching to "well it's just a stupid cat anyhow" instead of "this was my little buddy who curled up in my lap and yawned and pawed at me," I gotta face down losing the guy who practically raised me, who I ALREADY mourned last time he tried to shuffle off this mortal coil.