Just another day

 Thursday, September 19, 2024

I throw my paranoid imaginings about being judged away. Fear to reveal here pervades my past reluctance to do more than tiptoe around people, hide in the shadows, and avoid interaction with others. Things changed when I became aware of this, seeing my automatic self attempting to step softly so I didn't annoy the other occupant in the house who is hard of hearing. I saw myself stepping quietly throughout childhood: decades on automatic cruise control being a tentative tiptoe. A misophonic mother and 18-year-older sister. Can't query the 8B humans on this planet with diverse world views and histories whether this is normal behavior. I felt like I shouldn't exist, due to my interpreting myself as 'less than' others. I thought that it happened before I was capable of thought, in infancy, that interpretation cemented later by trying to make myself invisible to the bullies in my life, and my mother, who loved me but just didn't have a clue. . .an internal family of selves, watching myself in this automaticity operate and a conscious perplexed, seeking and then enlightened, to understand why. 

No one to blame, for gaining some toxic lightning-fast impression as an infant or young child. I'm now an elderly person just saying eureka about seemingly solving the mystery that created that weltanschauung that has lived in me until now. 

Belief I am unworthy and less than.  

I know how ridiculous it sounds that it should be a huge eureka moment for me. Even apologizing to myself for my mistakes of being unable to see what little self, what mini-me directed my problems: that I've been living it, unconsciously enslaving myself in it! Not believing myself capable of more, being my own worst critic, and even preventing me from writing here because after all it's all hubris and how dare I actually think I can write something that can be misinterpreted, and that others won't think the worst about me. 

I'm a normal human being with all the flavors and flaws common to most of us who have relatively limited encounters with diversity though more than many. It slept in me for decades, this understanding that the many parts, the many selves, that don't speak with a voice but with a feeling-- an impression-- a bias to travel one path or another. Frost took the path 'less traveled by, and that has made all the difference'. 

Virginia Satir, Claude Steiner, even Jung glimpsed and explored the path I'm treading, hoping for surcease from the mostly bourgeois suffering. I hesitate to label my little mini-me's because that too judges them, instead of being self-compassionate, accepting if not in actual agreement.

I'm buried in distractions and read a lot, write a lot, and never share it. 

I've chosen distractions all my life. Reading, both fiction and non. Loving the worlds created by the writers in the adventures of the Hyperion and Uplift series, other worlds, and fiction containing what I like the most: questions about the deepest interests in our lives: ethics, behavior, evolution of the primate into humanity, changing contexts , defining confusing abstractions which define and divide a person. 

Never feeling competent for challenging tasks, i asked for advice that was not helpful, and identified with my mistakes, labeling myself. I've been a victim of myself! All installed from infancy and based on chance sensory impressions. 

Examine and know thyself! Let the little judgmental minister within shut its eyes and let me speak, even if what I have to say is hubris, and even if it is not worth hearing. I have to risk speech to consolidate a new paradigm, a compassionate awareness of my automated infant self's awakening to my and others' programs, none meant to be toxic but the result has been. It's held me with my amygdala spewing fear, from going forwards, shouting that I have little to say of worth, because after all, this mini-me that says so is still unsure it is safe, having warred with its companion parts over consensus that others can hold the microphone and have a say in my life.  

I'm allowed, finally to speak/write in a forum anybody can see, anybody can judge, anybody can hurt me.  A quiet eureka filled with fear as I jump off this precipice.

Interactions revealing what we think,  share and reality-test interpretations of a complicated world filled with change. There has never been a golden age except this moment, with the opportunity to feel and think and choose directions, opinions, actions, agency, more. 

Echo tunnel came from not sharing and reality-testing that thinking,  like my poor sister did, refusing medical help, believing and relying completely on her own opinions, thinking she was living well independently when she was not. She knew on some level unconsciously, and kept people away so they would not see how far gone her situation was. 

I was invited to help and wound up there for two years, watching it happen and unable to do anything about it, stymied by being seen as the bratty little sister who was clueless. And I was clueless but it's easy to see in another person what you can't see in yourself.   A scary thought, that without testing it in the arena of other people, we can continue, unopposed, in thinking we alone know what's real and what's false.

It happened when I visited my sister after her stroke when she fell on May 16 2020. I wound up staying for two years, to care for her and attempt to alleviate her major disabilities, as well as attempt to help her choose to see that she wasn't living well alone. I did what I could for her and it ended predictably because she was the older sister and knew better than a bratty kid sister what was best for herself.

Never good enough: a toxin to sharing

Despite my best efforts I've not shared more than a fraction of what I've written. Being concise is part of this, because it needs to be. 

Thought it first, then got it on page, then edit later, but editing bogs down with organizing and continuity is flawed. 

Sharing one tiny paragraph today, of interest to only relatives or those who knew my sister Pat. She needs to be around people; she was afraid of other people and it all had to do with worrys about being judged. She wouldn't go out of her condo on the fourth floor during the day because she would run into others living in the building. She claimed it was because she didn't want people posting things about her in the elevator. She stayed up all night and slept much of the day, even when I was taking care of her. Making breakfast couldn't get her up, no matter what I made. She liked watching TV all the time and wouldn't turn it off. She would get up to watch her soap opera most weekdays but not all. I found other things to do, finally, because she lived in an over-55 adult community, with lots of activities. My dear sister could have participated but she wouldn't. I tried to get her to an eye doctor for over two decades, but she wouldn't hear of it, becoming slowly blind until my last visit, she had to sit two feet away from an extra large TV to see. 

I had my own cataract fixed to show her it was a simple 10 minute procedure, but she was too sure that her vision couldn't be improved. It was difficult to understand, since it also removed her ability to drive a car and she couldn't get a license. Her TV addiction allowed her to continue to be physically inactive, and eventually she couldn't even walk. In 2004 when we went to a niece's wedding she needed a walker and couldn't manage stairs. When I visited several years later she needed a rollator walker, which she pushed herself on, not being able to stand for more than a minute or two. That she couldn't see that her condo was a mess and all the spoiled food and piles of mail and clothing everwhere for her meant that she was living her life as she wanted to live it. I've been coming to visit for a few weeks ever since 2009 and cleaning up her mess, throwing out the piles of junk mail from over 60 charities she contributed to. She was charitable to others but not to herself. It really showed me how important it is to interact with other people, hear contradictory viewpoints (all she would listen to was Fox News, a soap opera, and old TV shows) and move one's body: use it or you lose it. 

There is so much more I could write and I have written many times about it but it's too much to share here. It's painful thinking how she created, unknowingly, the problems that caused her to completely lose her most prized possession: her independence.  I love my sister but I have learned from her mistakes, and puzzled out for myself our shared, previously perplexing contradictions due to our unchosen childhood programming. More later.

 

Every year I try to write holiday letter

 And this year it's the same. Like the last few years, it never gets sent: winds up too long (up to 12 pages now) and I'm really trying to condense it. Maybe I should just post it here. 

Just know friends, I do care. It'll get there and instead of a holiday letter, maybe it'll be a valentine's day letter.

Bauerschmidt Brandner Holland-Moritz Manthey Toye Tyson Wahl

Nothing is going out yet. So little done. It's an overwhelming task. 

I owe Charlotte and my other known relatives the complete melange of photos and letters --many Gigabytes & duplicates.

I thought I could create a webpage/archive: complicated. Then I took another task (uncompleted, Julia, I'm sorry) and got overwhelmed and distracted.
 
Does it make sense to dump them all as is onto DVDs or thumb drives & let everyone do whatever they want with them? 

Need to ensure that those without Photoshop can open them as regular jpgs. Wanted people to have the option of enhancing/cropping/etc with that program. I should post the good ones here; can't be sure if they were posted by my cousins elsewhere as it's all lumped together on computer. 

I can't begin to approximate the myriad tools available in photoshop: just lightening or darkening some made a big difference, or cleaning up scratches. Others are pretty awful and I don't know how yet. The layering tool allows one to retain the original scan and change a working copy. More and more gigabytes. 

The next generation should have the raw negatives. They can use these and future advanced capturing tools. They should have that opportunity. 

Who do I give them to? Who is interested in their progenitors? When I was young I had other things going on. I missed many opportunities to get to know my father, who passed when I was 26 suddenly. I missed opportunities to know my relatives and their children. I always thought there was going to be plenty of time.

Any one of us may pass suddenly and leave it all undone. For photos, names weren't written on some of them. Who do we recognize and who are these people? 

These need dispersing to anyone who is interested to either name them or discard them. Take them off me, remove my load of things to do that I haven't done yet and might never get a "Round To-It."
 
I hear many voices calling me -- inside myself. Pressure I'm putting on myself to honor some committments and get things done. I can blame it on bad genes but an inner voice says something like "what does it matter, who cares, you can do it tomorrow." It's all about choice: what is important at the moment may overshadow what's really important. And choosing what is important is difficult: myriad things seem important.

I tried mere sharpening and enhancing the lighting, since many of these negatives were poorly or brightly lit. Will post a few of the worst here today and some of the better ones 'tomorrow.'

I have no photo of Nellie to go with story about her. Here are some photos.

Nelly गेट्स हेर exercise

On Thursday Nelly came home from the doctor's who suggested we ensure she exercises today. Following me outside I walked around the perimeter several times with her, then raked up late winter leaves, dead branches, twigs, etc. Nelly followed along, sniffing early crocus flowers and the scents other creatures have left as they visited our yard. She followed along as I wheel barrowed to and from the compost pile, and to and from the front and back doors to coax my indoor husband outside. I was watching her faithfully until I had some -heavy loads to carry and needed to get a hand truck from the shed. I moved them, then looked for her. "Maybe she went indoors,” I thought. Looking everywhere indoors, checking all hiding places. Even Bil looked. We looked outdoors in all the normal places, and indoors again. A beautiful day, in the middle 40s, here we go again looking for Nellie. Outside, viewing the waterfront below from the edge of the deck, then walking next door east, and I saw movement down the cliff and on the thin spit of beach. Running down the street, calling to Bil, hoping I could get there before she disappeared behind the boulders that reach from the cliff's edge to the cove, across from Terri's house I stop to see Nellie amble east towards the boulders, a couple dozen feet away. I move quickly to attempt intercept, picking my way down, holding on to saplings lining the diagonal slope, one not a tree but thorny dead colms of wild raspberry (ouch). At the boulders I look west - less than 10 feet away, so I call her and she peers at right angles to me with her one good eye. She ambles in that direction away from me up the hillside where dead branches, broken bottles and bits of trash make passage difficult and I'm rushing now in that direction uphill to grab her before she injures herself. Nelly, you know, had been in a car accident before we adopted her, and she doesn’t perceive things like a normal cat does. She looks the other way when you call her name, attempting to triangulate using only one almost blind eye and one possibly good ear. Sometimes she doesn't know you when you attempt rescue – I’ve learned not to pick her up as she struggles and scratches like she's fighting for her life. This time, however, she knows me and allows me to detain her, as long as I don't try to pick her up, while Bil climbs down the cliff with a cat carrier. This is the second time we've had to rescue her from this dangerous slope. There are all kinds of hazards in this area for little animals who don’t have protective clothing like we do. Little Ring Tail was injured last year. It took 43 stitches to repair the open flaps of skin, and two weeks in a room of her own with meds.

Last time I found Nelly she was further towards the top and frightened, after being missing for some hours. There were three or four times she went missing. Once we found her crouched beneath a tree just before the little bridge at the Kohrs house. The sun was going down and even though we called and called, she didn’t meow, even when we were right next to her. I don’t think I’ve even seen her look so frightened as that day when we found her.

Another time she found her way into the yard of the house behind that tree. Tim who lives there spotted her and came over to tell us, knowing that this cat is not able to navigate very well. We were out, but reached by phone (the number is on our front door) we were able to rush home and return her to safety.