And another thought

Just as I can't stop the suck from sucking for other people - when bad stuff happens in their life, no one can stop the suck from sucking for me. So maybe having a spouse or kids or whatever after losing my dad wouldn't have made it suck any less.

Also, I don't know. I did the grief counseling thing and while I suppose it HELPED to talk to someone, I was really hoping for some kind of magic technique that would fix it and I guess there really isn't.

That the only way "out" is "through."

And that's true of a lot of things. No one can really help me "get over" (or, more correctly: get through, and make my peace with it on the other side) this thing, they can only sit and watch me as I fight with it.

And that's....yeah. That's a life lesson. I mean, yes, people can do things to not make the bad things around me WORSE - just as I can be kind to my students and do things like be flexible about make-up work, but that doesn't stop the suck, it just....doesn't add more on top of it.

And that also does teach me: when someone has it bad, do what you can to not make it worse. You probably can't make it *better,* but at least you can avoid making it worse. And yeah, there were a few things that happened in the wake of (gestures broadly) everything that happened last fall that people did that made it worse, in a couple cases people not wanting to respect the boundaries I was trying to set without me having to get very forceful and even a little rude in one case.

Being a human is hard.

And I'm tired right now. I need to do a bit more on this stats stuff but then I am going home and changing the sheets on my bed and doing a bunch of laundry and washing my hair and probably going to bed early tonight.

Another thing I notice - any mention in my reading of death or dead bodies makes me very sad or uncomfortable right now, like I'm over-sensitized. I hit the point in "The Professor's House" last night, where Tom Outland was telling his story, and he relates how the man they essentially took in (the guy was a drifter and an alcoholic, but a good cook and a housekeeper, and Tom and Roddy essentially watched over him) got bit by a rattlesnake and died horribly, and they also described finding the human remains in the pueblo (? I guess you call it that, even if it was an ancient group of Native people) that they found and....it just made me sad all over again.

maybe I need to switch over to the Betsy-Tacy books Katie sent me; I'm guessing nothing bad happens in them.

I do find the one thing that helps with just all the existential feelings is finding something absorbing - a book, or working on a quilt, or watching a good movie. I suppose that's how everyone manages? Everyone who's figured out how short life is and how little we can really do and how little we can really help anyone else have an easier time of it here? I used to roll my eyes about people who 'couldn't be alone with their thoughts' (and so were always on smartphones) but more and more, I find that I do need things to divert me, at least at some times.


Another thought: perhaps part of the reason I like handpiecing is that in a way, it feels like making order out of chaos - you have all these bits of fabric, and you start sewing, and eventually they come together into a new whole. I also used to like "arranging" things when I was a kid, it didn't matter what it was - my toys, or little pebbles, or buttons....the idea of making an orderly pattern out of a jumble of things. And it may be my frustration with the world is that it feels like chaos right now but nothing I can do makes much order out of it.