I thought I had it in me, I used to be so sure
"When you go through a huge change in life, there's always a transition period, there's always a period of shock." ~Amy, marine biologist, The Colony: Arrival and Survival
I thought the problem would be with those I love, those I live with. I was capable, I knew the reality of things (and the unreality); I was prepared. I understood.
I was wrong.
I have spent the whole of today wandering around, staring vaguely at the structures of the grid, having no idea what to do in any given moment. A hunt was announced at Twisted Thorn Textures, earlier, and I had to force myself to think through what I formerly considered the basics: getting dressed; changing tags; teleporting. It's not that I'd forgotten, it was more that my thinking process seems slowed.
It's as if breathing takes up the whole of my available resources, and it is the greatest struggle to do anything else.
I know I pushed, I know I pushed myself, harder than I've ever had to before, to get the packing done, to keep going, to keep everyone organized and moving. I know I pushed to my limits and past them. I know after a while I was stuck off in the sidelines, watching everyone move and lift and pack and carry, concentrating on breathing. Exhausted to the very core of my being.
But I was fine after the move, I was okay. We were leaving; everything else would resolve on its own. I was moving through it...
Nobody ever said you couldn't lie to yourself.
So it's back to recovering. I haven't looked through the calendar yet; I hope to do that at some point tomorrow, see what bids I can, in all honesty, take. This is going to be a slow, gradual recovery, I fear, of body, mind and spirit, and it is going to take time I can ill spare to get where I need to be, again.
I'll get there. Sadly, I have survived worse. So I know I'll get there, in time. It's just that it's going to take that time. Time I did not, in all honestly, want to take to recover.
I'm really, really not good at being gentle with myself. I'm better at gauging my limits, and pulling back just before I collapse, before muscle shreds from bone. This move took everything I had, and then kept taking.
So it's going to take a while.
If I'm grumpier than usual with anyone, that'll be why. Impatient with myself; impatience with the process. But all things in time.
Next up: why do cats levitate in Second Life? No answers, but a lot of questions.
I thought the problem would be with those I love, those I live with. I was capable, I knew the reality of things (and the unreality); I was prepared. I understood.
I was wrong.
I have spent the whole of today wandering around, staring vaguely at the structures of the grid, having no idea what to do in any given moment. A hunt was announced at Twisted Thorn Textures, earlier, and I had to force myself to think through what I formerly considered the basics: getting dressed; changing tags; teleporting. It's not that I'd forgotten, it was more that my thinking process seems slowed.
It's as if breathing takes up the whole of my available resources, and it is the greatest struggle to do anything else.
I know I pushed, I know I pushed myself, harder than I've ever had to before, to get the packing done, to keep going, to keep everyone organized and moving. I know I pushed to my limits and past them. I know after a while I was stuck off in the sidelines, watching everyone move and lift and pack and carry, concentrating on breathing. Exhausted to the very core of my being.
But I was fine after the move, I was okay. We were leaving; everything else would resolve on its own. I was moving through it...
Nobody ever said you couldn't lie to yourself.
So it's back to recovering. I haven't looked through the calendar yet; I hope to do that at some point tomorrow, see what bids I can, in all honesty, take. This is going to be a slow, gradual recovery, I fear, of body, mind and spirit, and it is going to take time I can ill spare to get where I need to be, again.
I'll get there. Sadly, I have survived worse. So I know I'll get there, in time. It's just that it's going to take that time. Time I did not, in all honestly, want to take to recover.
I'm really, really not good at being gentle with myself. I'm better at gauging my limits, and pulling back just before I collapse, before muscle shreds from bone. This move took everything I had, and then kept taking.
So it's going to take a while.
If I'm grumpier than usual with anyone, that'll be why. Impatient with myself; impatience with the process. But all things in time.
Next up: why do cats levitate in Second Life? No answers, but a lot of questions.
Comments
Hopefully that helps you somehow?
So take the time to adjust, decompress, make the new place your own, be grumpy - you've earned it all.
I can't do that with this, because it's not just mental or emotional stress. Lifting, moving, sorting anything goes immediately into making my fingers numb; my carpal hasn't been this bad since I was working for my uncle, typing in entire product manuals by hand (and he's been dead easily a decade at this point). Add in that part of how I get up every morning is push myself off the mattress on the floor on stiffened wrists and fists, and bent knees--and that takes its own toll.
But I'll get there. It's just going to be the long way, with breathing, and stopping when I'm tired, and not kicking myself (too much) for not helping "as much as I could".
The one good thing? Realizing that this is a handicap-friendly place; right now, the girl is busy making lunch, at a counter she can roll right up to for ease. She can get her own iced tea most of the time. I still have to help her from the chair, sometimes, to shower, but she can shower by herself, and all I need to do is bring the chair out, and bring it back when she's done.
She feels more useful; I feel like I don't have to do everything for her, all the time. So it will improve, I just have to be...that now-dreaded word--patient.
*hugs you back, and hugs Sphynx since I forgot* I'll get there. Time, and time, and understanding, and not getting in my own way (hah!). But I will get there.
Sadly, that place was an agricultural town near the foothills of the Rockies, but hey. I spent, in all, six years there.
From then to now, we've moved--either with my mother, or later, with the girl--a total of fifteen times more (counting this last move). So moving stress? It always happens. Losing things? It happens, too.
This was only the second time, though, in an entire life of uprooting and packing for some elsewhere to come, that it felt like we were escaping rather than moving out.
And the first time that happened? I did escape, by throwing everything into the back of my car it could hold and living homeless for four months, rather than live with my abusive boyfriend at the time.
At least, this time, we escaped (but put most of what we owned into storage) and were able to drive to a hotel. What a difference money makes. :)
(And, to be fair, when I shoved clothes and camping gear and books into my car and drove away? I was that oh-so-wise age, twenty-two. I likely had other options, I just didn't see them!)
As to why cats levitate in SL? Depends ... are we talking plain or buttered cats? The physics of each are quite different, I've been told ...
And for the rest of it--thanks.