Saturday, January 13 part 2
Jan. 14th, 2024 01:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderI did get some kind texts from two of my sisters that I don't communicate with that often. We get along well; for some reason we just don't talk as much as I do with some of the others. I have six sisters, by the way, so I know it's hard for the gentle reader to keep track!
It bugs me a bit that I know that means that Trainwreck was talking with them about me needing to euthanize Hollywood. If it were anyone else, it wouldn't bother me that the mentioned this to other people, but with Trainwreck, I can tell by how the texts were worded that Trainwreck built up the story to be more dramatic than it was so that she could enjoy the attention in telling the story.
As I said before, I feel like most of the sadness and pain I have felt about Hollywood was while she was still alive, and I had to take care of her and worry about her comfort for a few years before this. I had a couple of times in there where I thought I might have to put her down, but was able to improve her situation with pain medication, really focusing on keeping her teeth floated often, more food (started giving her lots of soaked feed), blanketing her (she never used to need it), and so on.
I think you can hit a point where you realize that death for this animal isn't tragic, just a sadly inevitable event that could not be put off any longer by any amount of love or care giving.
I think that for Trainwreck, she's in a place right now where she's trying to deal with her own health crisis, and has not dealt with the passing of her partner three years ago, and the other health issues in our family. I know I have some pretty hard days too, thinking about how many members of my family will likely be gone within the next few years.
It's just that with her other baseline emotional issues, EVERYTHING is bad and dark and a huge tragedy for my sister, and she is painting my loss of Hollywood the way SHE wants to see it.
The thing is, if my sister lost an animal I don't have any idea of how she would REALLY feel about it, since I have never really believed that she actually loved any of the animals that she's had over the years. Her desire to have animals, the bizarre combination of saying she loves them then her demonstrating behavior that does not reflect love, and then she often resents owning them, sometimes abuses them through neglect or as an outcome of hoarding them (like when she didn't get her dog fixed, had a ton of puppies, and ended up with 11 short haired dogs unsuited to living outdoors chained all over her yard with inadequate shelter or food or care of any kind, yet she "loved" them).
How would she have any idea what I feel over losing my horse?
I know that sometimes, the death of an animal or another person are tied up with other things that can make things more complicated and painful. Like if the reason you lost the animal was through your own failure to care for them, or if they were "more" than an animal; like it was the horse your beloved uncle gave you before he died. Or if the horse were now the last horse you would own because you were too old to get another one; thus it represents a death of part of your identity.
In this case, Hollywood's death carried no extra meaning or guilt or unresolved issues.
Moving on.
A quiet evening. I have no idea if there is still an "alert" about concerns about power or not, but I know that our province IS running at capacity right now, because everyone's electric furnaces will be running full force, and likely lots of extra space heaters and so on. Our infrastructure has not expanded to meet the needs of more people moving here all the time.
We watched some more of "The Expanse".
I learned that in space, the astronaut's bodies destroy red cells at a higher rate than when they are on Earth, leading to higher rates of anemia.
https://med.uottawa.ca/en/news/study-being-space-destroys-more-red-blood-cells
It bugs me a bit that I know that means that Trainwreck was talking with them about me needing to euthanize Hollywood. If it were anyone else, it wouldn't bother me that the mentioned this to other people, but with Trainwreck, I can tell by how the texts were worded that Trainwreck built up the story to be more dramatic than it was so that she could enjoy the attention in telling the story.
As I said before, I feel like most of the sadness and pain I have felt about Hollywood was while she was still alive, and I had to take care of her and worry about her comfort for a few years before this. I had a couple of times in there where I thought I might have to put her down, but was able to improve her situation with pain medication, really focusing on keeping her teeth floated often, more food (started giving her lots of soaked feed), blanketing her (she never used to need it), and so on.
I think you can hit a point where you realize that death for this animal isn't tragic, just a sadly inevitable event that could not be put off any longer by any amount of love or care giving.
I think that for Trainwreck, she's in a place right now where she's trying to deal with her own health crisis, and has not dealt with the passing of her partner three years ago, and the other health issues in our family. I know I have some pretty hard days too, thinking about how many members of my family will likely be gone within the next few years.
It's just that with her other baseline emotional issues, EVERYTHING is bad and dark and a huge tragedy for my sister, and she is painting my loss of Hollywood the way SHE wants to see it.
The thing is, if my sister lost an animal I don't have any idea of how she would REALLY feel about it, since I have never really believed that she actually loved any of the animals that she's had over the years. Her desire to have animals, the bizarre combination of saying she loves them then her demonstrating behavior that does not reflect love, and then she often resents owning them, sometimes abuses them through neglect or as an outcome of hoarding them (like when she didn't get her dog fixed, had a ton of puppies, and ended up with 11 short haired dogs unsuited to living outdoors chained all over her yard with inadequate shelter or food or care of any kind, yet she "loved" them).
How would she have any idea what I feel over losing my horse?
I know that sometimes, the death of an animal or another person are tied up with other things that can make things more complicated and painful. Like if the reason you lost the animal was through your own failure to care for them, or if they were "more" than an animal; like it was the horse your beloved uncle gave you before he died. Or if the horse were now the last horse you would own because you were too old to get another one; thus it represents a death of part of your identity.
In this case, Hollywood's death carried no extra meaning or guilt or unresolved issues.
Moving on.
A quiet evening. I have no idea if there is still an "alert" about concerns about power or not, but I know that our province IS running at capacity right now, because everyone's electric furnaces will be running full force, and likely lots of extra space heaters and so on. Our infrastructure has not expanded to meet the needs of more people moving here all the time.
We watched some more of "The Expanse".
I learned that in space, the astronaut's bodies destroy red cells at a higher rate than when they are on Earth, leading to higher rates of anemia.
https://med.uottawa.ca/en/news/study-being-space-destroys-more-red-blood-cells
