and just ugh

I may heavily redact or delete this later, I don't know.

(Disclaimer, added later: part of this may be the after effects of a near-asthma attack I had this morning. Those always leave me worn out and sad - histamine reaction, maybe? Shortly before leaving for church I got that tight "band" feeling around my chest, like all my intercostals were cramping (and the muscles in my upper back decided to join in). I went anyway, on the grounds that (a) I needed to be there - had duties, (b) if this was something worse than asthma (though I've had people listen to my heart and the like when I'm having one, and nothing seems remiss, and all the bloodwork I've ever done has not turned up anything that would point to a heart issue) I wouldn't be alone, at least and (c) these things tend to be self-limiting, and yeah, in a half-hour it was gone, but I don't feel GREAT right now. Hot caffeinated tea at lunch did help some with the physical issues but I'm still tired and kind of over-emotional)

But right now I just feel sad and worn, and lonely but also ironically fed up with people and so really not wanting to interact.

Someone I knew ages ago from church died this past week. It's a long sad story but their adult grandchildren moved them to be near them, claiming this person (let's call them W.) had dementia and needed care. And the grandchildren got power of attorney, and apparently took all of W.'s money (W. came from a well-off background) and put them in the equivalent of a County Home...and well, maybe that's true, maybe not totally true, hard to tell. W. might have had the beginnings of dementia. But the abrupt cut-off from everyone they knew here - it was rumored the grandkids took away their cell phone.

But anyway, W. is dead after years of being estranged from people, and after having been rude to a former friend here (not me, and the former friend wonders if maybe it was the beginning of the manifestation of something like dementia, but). And it just makes me freaking sad because W. and their (long deceased before them) spouse were among the people who welcomed me here when I moved down here, and who were some of the steadfast people after the church split, and more and more I feel like I'm losing a lot of the connections with my previous life.

Sometimes I think that real life has gotten so soap-opera-y that that's why soap operas went off the airwaves.

Anyway. Another member, one who kind of helps things run smoothly, was out today with a spouse in the hospital, and a third person, when I mentioned a service project we were working on said "Oh. I didn't know we were still doing that. [Person with spouse in hospital] never called me to ask!" and I was like "yeah, because their spouse is in the hospital" (I had called the person to verify the project was still on, and I am someone who hates the phone) and there was some grumbling and snarking and I'm just so tired, y'all. Because I JUST found out this morning about W. dying, and I had kind of been friends with W. before they left, and so I was a little taken aback and sad. And honestly, as someone who just got through having a loved-one in the hospital, I know how taxing and demanding and upsetting it is, and I'm totally willing to cut the person slack, and I wish the other person had.

And yeah, I know: when people are hurting themselves they lash out and apparently the person in question had something else going on, but - there's SO MUCH of that going around, and I try to be kind and gracious and I sometimes wind up getting my head figuratively bitten off.

And I'm not wild about the idea of going back out for this service project but I kind of have to because I know the person whose spouse is in the hospital won't be there, and apparently a couple others can't be there, and...yeah.

And I'm tired of social media. It's all so much become a "if this person doesn't care for something I love, I'm going to impute Bad Reasons to them for it (sexism, racism, whatever) and I'm going to do whatever I can to dunk on them" and when did life become a giant game of, uh, micturational combat and again, I am so tired.

Folks, this: we are all fellow-passengers to the grave. Ain't none of us getting out of this alive no matter how many points we score or how many people we dunk on or how much hashtag activism we do. And life is hard and a lot of people are hurting and my general MO is not to add to that hurt.

I use Twitter as a way of connecting with certain friends but I'm beginning to wonder if it's just time to leave and, I don't know, have my life be quieter and more lonely and maybe I eventually adjust to just listening to the conversations inside my head instead?

And again, I'm mired in that feeling that nothing I can do can make anything materially better. I keep trying, I keep doing things that are objectively 'good' but it feels like none of it counts for anything because everyone's just become so cruel - it feels like all of a sudden, though it probably isn't.

Heh. The Kirin/Nirik episode of My Little Ponies struck me - essentially, there is this species of half-dragon, half-pony creatures (apparently Kirin or Qilin are a thing in some Asian mythology, but I am also wondering if this is a way to maybe set up some kind of future "look it would be possible for Spike and Rarity to be a thing, totally"). And they got angry with each other because....well, I don't know. But they shot flames out of their heads when they got angry, and burned down the whole town, and so their leader sent them to wade through The Stream of Silence which apparently not only shut them up, but blunted their emotions....and part of me goes, "Wow, that would be nice" (And that was Fluttershy's reaction, at least for a time. I admit I share the same potentially-totalitarian impulse she has of wanting everyone to Get Along and Be Nice even as I recognize it's impossible). But of course Autumn Blaze, one of the Kirin, feels frantic because she can't talk and the voices inside her head are driving her nuts and she finds a "cure" for the silence-cure....but gets banished as a result.

And, I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess what I'm saying is part of me goes "You know, if you just quit social media altogether, you'd have more time to read stuff, and you'd see less anger over stupid things and you might wind up happier in the long run" but another part of me goes "but you'd have no one to tallllllkkk tooooo" because there are a lot of days that without that, I wouldn't have much communication with other people other than work-related stuff....and just focusing on work gets me down. I need some fun light silly conversation but apparently that's Not Allowed now? That it marks you as an Insufficiently Serious person? That because you're not enraged and focusing on that one topic, you are probably really secretly siding with The Bad Side?

So I don't know.

A bunch of stuff - some of it I discussed above - are making me anxious and one thing that helps is cleaning, so I'm cleaning and putting stuff away. My laundry is mostly done and the stuff that's dry is put away (it can take me a while to get laundry put away).

I'm also thinking apprehensively ahead to the holidays, a little:

1. What do I get my dad for Christmas? He has all the clothes he needs. His eyes are bad enough now that reading really isn't a thing for him any more. He's on a somewhat restricted diet. I know he has enough tea ahead for quite a while.

2. What do I ask for? I know my mom is apprehensive right now about leaving the house and going shopping, and she also does not use the internet (and my dad really doesn't, any more) and I'm afraid that many of the things I might want or could ask for, it would be too much of an effort or burden but I don't want just money or gift cards for Christmas and I'm sadly thinking about maybe just saying I don't need anything and I'm okay with not getting gifts and I don't know and I want to cry because adulthood is just one long adjustment, it seems, to things being worse and sadder and me telling myself, "you stay quiet about your wants because other people's needs are greater" and I don't know.

also so many of the things I might want, I am afraid they look foolish or silly to my parents (born at the tail end of the Depression, raised during WWII, both came from frugal families, and I know I am much less frugal than they are).

3. I'm also trying to figure out a way of telling her if getting a tree is too much effort this year we can do without (or get some kind of little artificial tree, I don't know). I have my tree here, I can put that up a week or two before Thanksgiving and enjoy it up until I go up there for Christmas....

I dunno. I'm just feeling all the Bad Feelings today and it's bad. If I didn't have to go back out tonight I'd totally get into my pajamas and curl up in bed with a book of humorous short stories or something and tuck one of my stuffed Ponies up under each arm. (Yes, it does comfort me to do that, still, which is good, because I can't have a live pet.)

(And I was thinking earlier this afternoon, how I long for them to perfect a realistic/real-behaving furry robot cat or dog, especially one that was even remotely affordable to a person like me, because I'd want one so badly. I wish I had something that at least produced the illusion of loving me that was around on a regular basis. Yes, this is part of the reason for all the stuffed animals; they may not be REAL but at least it's a friendly face.)

But yeah. Really not in a good headspace for going back to work tomorrow. I hate these non-weekend weekends.

When I ask "What's a weekend?" it's a sarcastic reference to how I never really get time off, not a Lady Grantham-never-worked-a-day-in-her-life thing.


Added: as I said on Twitter, and I think it's an apt metaphor:

this fall, in my personal life, has felt like emotional dodgeball, but I am neither good at dodging the balls nor catching them (which is a way of getting the thrower "out" or at least scoring points) and I keep getting hit but I am also not allowed to leave the game as an "out."

I always hated dodgeball. (The only time I enjoyed it was the Youth Group version we used to play with the kids - we used soft foam balls, so they didn't hurt, and the rule was that we kept score instead of doing it as a "last man standing" thing, and after someone else got out you got to cycle back in, so the people hit early on weren't left sitting on the sidelines for the rest of the game).

the worst dodgeball was one time in gym when it was played with fully-inflated regulation volleyballs. I can't believe that they got away with that, even in the less-child-friendly 80s, someone could have got their nose broken.