Dark Seasons of the Soul

I am inevitably going to loose my pet cat companion of over sixteen years. Her name is Pandora, she is seventeen plus years old and I have had the honor of sharing her life with her since she was about one years old. She is a gentle and loving spirit. All who meet her (of quality) recognize this immediately. I wonder about those who cannot see animals have a spirit of their own and consider them mere things, but that is a topic for another time. Pandora has been in an extended period of kidney failure, high blood pressure, and partial blindness since April of 2010. I have taken ALL measures possible, sparing no expense or inconvenience, to keep her quality of life high and pain at a very minimum if not nonexistant. I give her several daily medications, daily IV fluids and take her to the vet for regular injections of hormones.

She is failing despite all efforts and being a valiant fighter and survivor. I must now watch her get weaker, loose her sight, struggle to eat and walk, and loose her quality of life.

I am not handling this future loss and current pain at watching her slowly decline towards death. It is torture for me, daily and insidious, and has been for months now. I hurt. My heart feels dead in places. I cannot 'be' with this loss and pain, cannot accept it even though there is nothing else I can do but accept it. I want to fix it, make it better, make it stop. I am powerless to stop aging and death and, so it seems, to be at peace. I cannot love her and care for her without crying, robbing her of my peaceful energy that might help her also be at peace. This last part plagues me with guilt. I want to at least help her pass with love and peace.

I have a few close friends who have pets, feel as strongly about them as I do, and whom have gone through their loss before and therefore empathize with me and try their best to support me while living their own lives. I also have some who do not seem to register my despair. Perhaps they cannot deal with this pain, they do not find it of importance, it is inconvenient for them, or perhaps just do not care that much. It unsettles me that I do not have that support from all of those whom I consider close to me. Perhaps because I would do anything for a friend in need. I have been there when it is inconvenient, uncomfortable, and painful. Perhaps because it is at these incovenient, uncomfortable, and dark seasons of the soul that I especially need community, understanding, and support. I treasure those friends who know me so well and care for me so much that they see me or at least ask and find the truth there where it is difficult for them to see and then are present with me both in joyous times and despair both. I wish from the depths of my being for a true friend to go with me through this. I wonder if this only happens when you have a partner/spouse/significant other, not with mere friends. Maybe the sense of family I feel with my friends is not true reality or is different for me because I do not have that partner as many others do. Or worse, do we, like when we die, ultimately deal with darkness and despair alone.

I wonder if anyone gets it?

I was wondering recently. Maybe it is because I recently turned the frightening age of 40, maybe due to the circumtances that surround me, or maybe due to my own set of circumstances (that I will say I find myself in when really I am fully responsible for).

I have many, many friends (I really would like to add another many) who recently have gotten married or who are planning weddings in the near future. So many that I find myself one of the only single people I know, especially at age 40. In pondering this I realized that most of those people are mid-twenties to thirty years of age and are in that stage of their lives. To go on, (as I realized I am sometimes very dense) I realized that I also was in that stage of my life, amazingly, when I was in my mid-twenties. I was "in love" and got engaged and then planned a wedding and got married. And about seven years later I was divorced. I'm not lamenting this fact, just stating it. It was the right thing to do. As right as not getting married when I did and to whom I did would have been. It just hit me recently as I sometimes see that "poor Rona" look in my paired off friends faces when they see the lonely, single, 40 year old (some more than others), that I have been there, done that. Not that I don't want to ever do "that" again, but I needed to reinforce this to myself and then thought "I wonder if anyone else gets it?" There is a huge part of me that is happy as things are and a part that wants more.

I wonder how others see me, see my life and the choices I have made? Do they see the inherent errors in all living and learning? Do they pity me? Do they respect me? Do they understand me? Would they tell me if they did or didn't?

(I apoligize for my flagrent use of parentheses and quotation marks in this and all of my other writings.)

What do I want?

I was thinking about what it is I want. It led me to ponder: what does everyone want, humans, the peoples of this world in general. Is it a purpose in life or do we get more and more specific. Success. Wealth. Power. Popularity. Acceptance. Happiness. Peace. To feel "full."

Let's go one step further. There is one thing that encompases all this that suddenly comes to mind. To avoid suffering and/or pain.

I realize the validity of this as I can see in it most of my actions. Most of the time I can track backwards and find that most things I do are to avoid pain. There are so many flavors of pain out there. Failure, loniliness, mental anguish, loss, self critisism, ridicule, the feeling of being in quick sand, or just plain invisibility. It's so very different for every being and yet (maybe comfortingly) the same for every being.

I still feel more confident in stating it more poetically, we all want "peace" in order to live our life to it's fullest in our own unique way.

And what do you know, even after that archeological excavation into the inner reaches of the psyche I have come full circle. What do I want? The specifics remain elusive.

A Purpose, Your Purpose

I wonder how many others out there in the big wide world long for a purpose in life.

How many already have a purpose. How many have always known their purpose. How many have had to search for it or had to hunt for it like a agent searching for a serial killer about to make his next kill. How many are still searching longingly for a purpose. And even how many don't really see the need or have never even wasted one fleeting thought on the subject at all. How many have outright given up entirely on finding their purpose?

Me? Perhaps this will be enlightening...

heaviness in heart

uneasy, unsure, unknown

what to do? and how?