Not Enough Time

I’m having that feeling of not enough time again.   I think the pandemic is making it worse because it is stealing so much time from us.   I’m struggling with that feeling of there not being enough time left to have a good life.    Sean says these thoughts are coming from my core beliefs and it’s the core beliefs resisting change.   The goal is to recognize that it’s the core beliefs and challenge them,  which is hard to do because because they feel so real.  

I’ve mentioned before,  the story of my border collie Molly whose years of life prior to me getting her were abusive and how I only had her for 2yrs before she died from an aggressive cancer.  I bought Molly because no one loved her,  and she needed someone to love her.   I loved her.   I was devastated by her death not only because it was so sudden and she was so young,  but also because she didn’t live long enough for the greater portion on her life to have been longer than the unloved portion of her life.    And as I’ve mentioned previously …. I feel like Molly.    We talked a little bit about this last week and I remembered another dog whose  ‘loved’  life was shorter than his length of life.  Nazzie came to me at 12yrs of age.   He had been abandoned on a balcony of an apartment building.   Complaints of his barking had the superintendent leaving notices on the apartment door, but they went unanswered.   Eventually the barking became weaker until someone thought it sounded like a dog in distress.   Authorities were called and when the police broke into the dwelling, they found an emaciated hound dog near death.  Birds were eating his flesh.   He was rushed to the spca medical facility where they discovered that he was paralyzed in the hind end.   His ‘owners’ had skipped out on warrants for some illegal actions,  and left him out on the balcony.   Given his condition and advanced years,  Nazzie should have been euthanized,  but something about him tugged at the heartstrings of the staff and they decided to go to bat for him.   They brought him back to decent weight and got a wheelchair for him.   An MRI was out of the financial means of the spca and xrays alone couldn’t give a clear picture of what was causing his paralysis.   It was thought to be a disc issue.    A rescue stepped forward to take Nazzie under their wing,  and I volunteered to transport him to the foster home.  As it turned out the foster home bailed and Nazzie came home with me & became ‘my’ dog.  He was with me for two years and in the last few months his condition deteriorated until finally it was time to let him go.   It’s funny how an old dog can come into your life and spend just two years, and yet feel like he’s been with you forever.   The strange thing though is that I don’t feel the same way about Nazzie as I do about Molly.  I don’t have that sense of Nazzie not have more ‘loving’ life than whatever went before.   Perhaps it was because he was old and despite everything, lived a dogs life span.  Fourteen is a dogs average life span.   He had two years filled with love and caring.   He touched many people.   Somehow that two years seems to be sufficient.   But Molly’s two years seems insufficient.    Molly had a lifetime yet to live.  Cancer cheated her out of ten years.    Maybe that’s the difference.   Molly still had time,  and Nazzie used up all of his time.   I don’t really know.   It’s confusing.    Maybe I feel like Molly now,  but if/when things get better and I have a happy few years of life,  it’ll flip and I’ll feel more like Nazzie.

 

Mixed Messages

I think my mother regretted her life choices.    She had aspirations to be a professional singer and she gave up those dreams to get married,  and have children.    She used to tell us  “don’t throw your life away”,   “have a career before you get married and lump yourself with children”.   So in effect,  saying that she threw her life away by getting married.   But then right on the heels of those statements she’d say,  “not that I regret having my children”.    It was a mixed message.    For me the message that stuck was that I ruined my mother’s life and robbed her of her dreams.   It was my fault that my mother’s life was unhappy.   Of course,  the intellectual side of my brain tells me that it was not my fault.   How could it have been.    I didn’t exist yet.   For whatever the reason,  it was ‘her’ choice to get married and her choice to have children.   Did she regret that choice on some level?   Maybe.   But still …. it wasn’t my fault.    So why do I still feel somehow to blame?    Sean says if I could talk to my child self after something happened that made me feel it was my fault,  what would I say to help that younger me to understand what happened.   To understand the context.  

 

Choices

Growing up I always heard the expression,  “you made your bed and now you can sleep in it”.  The expression meaning that you made your choice and now you have to live with it.   I think this made me afraid of making choices because it was implied that choices were irreversible.   So there is always a fear of making the wrong choice.   Even today.

 

Revelation

I feel like I’m too old to be feeling the emotions I’m feeling.   I feel uncomfortable with people knowing how broken and fragile I feel.   I feel like I have the emotions of a child.   When I cry I feel like  people,  I don’t know who these ‘people’ are because I’m alone,  but ‘people’ will think I’m being dramatic and over reacting and ‘too old’ to be feeling the emotions that cripple me.    And I remember always being told that I was too sensitive and I let things bother me too much,  and that I over reacted  (emotionally) to things.   I was talking to Sean about this and I remembered just such an incident.   I think I would have been around seven years of age.   It was when we moved from the house on Venetian Cres.,  to the townhouse.    I had a stuffed toy lamb that I’d had from infancy and  “Lamby”  was stolen when we moved.   He was out on the front lawn and someone took him.   I remember being devastated and crying and crying like it was the end of the world.   Talk about emotions being disproportionate to the situation.   My discussion with Sean was about ‘why’ I am so over sensitive.   Why do seemingly small things reduce me to tears.  It’s like I’m over emotional.   Commercials can make me cry.   Heck I cried when Dino left home on the Flintstones ….. I remember him walking away with his little hobo stick over his shoulder,  and it broke my heart.   What was/is wrong with me??  Why have I been so emotional all my life?

In the wake of all of the above musings,  it came back to me about feeling ‘too old’ to feel what I feel.   And I suddenly had one of those flashbulb memories and it was connected to Lamby.   I was told,  “you’re too old to behave that way > too old to be crying over a lost stuffed animal”.    Remember I was seven.    And I was told that many many times during my childhood …… “you’re too old to be ______”.