Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Coronavirus
lighter:
Typp:
I'm comforted by the way you're moving through problems. You find solutions or make peace with what is... it's really how I see your posts these days. Just very pointed and focused. No confusion is what I'm trying to say here.
Today my T said our minds are like crabs in the way we learn new things... a step forward, one back, then two sideways. We don't learn in a linear fashion. That's why there are really confusing days where we just don't get what we thought we got the day before, etc. Paying attention to our thoughts and responses , when things aren't feeling settled and grounded, is the way to get back to feeling grounded.
I'm glad you're OK with being at home and ready to weather this storm for the duration without huge anxiety. Finding a way to see your osteopath is an issue, but you'll do what you can while remaining safe in that regard... however you deal with that. We all have to figure out how to deal with dentist appointments, medical appointments.... remembering to pay attention to what's going on inside will help us get through it.
::Nod::
Lighter
Hopalong:
Glad you're coping, Lighter, though I'm sorry you find you keep having to go places in public. I am just NOT. For almost six weeks now. Only have to keep this up for probably two years, no problem. !!!!
Saw a video of a Canadian couple I like who just lost their hearty, all-rules-following FIL, not elderly...who worked at Home Depot. Despite his strict adherence and masks and gloves and handwashing and six-feet-aparting, he caught it and died.
So I hope everyone I know and those I don't soon catch on soon to what Stay Home actually means.
I do have to go out on Thursday, to a necessary doctor's appointment. It's not in a hospital setting and I do trust them to be all over disinfection, as I will be. But to just go places to buy non-emergency stuff or stuff that could be delivered, however inconveniently, I'm wishing "acting normal" wasn't still happening in areas where the virus is just arriving and building up speed. (And where going out for essentials is unavoidable.)
A dear 89-y/o neighbor has been trying to convince her (and my) favorite neighbor-friend to take her to Lowe's, because she "needs" to buy flower seedlings. She just wants to get out, which is soooo understandable. But the hard truth is, nobody "needs" flowers. We need food, shelter, medicine, safe social connection, and that's it. Most communities, for the privileged anyway, can deliver food and meds. Most fortunate middle-to-upper-class people can manage online socializing or walks-and-talks in safe areas 8 feet apart. Farther if one can.
Just moaning. I wish the U.S. were all united as long as it takes, in accepting Stay Home.
Hugs
Hops
Hopalong:
Tupp, the U.K. news is painful to read, I'm so sorry.
I think you're coping with it incredibly well, and son too.
I agree with you, this is going to be a lot longer than folks are hoping.
I don't like to indulge too much fantasy or hope, nowhere near as much as I like
trying to adapt to what reality is, not waiting for reality to become what I want.
Almost all the hopeful fantasies I have of what an ideal life IS, can be achieved within
myself in a small space, if my food and shelter are stable. They are.
For the rest, I think inner growth, writing, painting, growing, connecting (even if online), will be on average enough to sustain me and even allow me to still have those moments of real fulfillment, even happiness. Some of that will come with M if our relationship continues to grow. If not, I can find it with poetry, reading, learning, playing piano (badly), reaching out with letters or calls or online. I believe this period, should I remain virus free, can be rich.
Not perfect. That's beyond me. I had a couple whiney days. And now, sun out, sat in yard with friend eight feet apart, drank some wine, felt some joy. And gratitude's back.
I'm alive. The world is in pain but always has been, the pandemic just brings it nearer.
Hugs
Hops
Hopalong:
CB,
That's so lovely that Mario is still in your life, as a caring friend! I didn't know.
And madjool dates are my new "junk" food. I have 4-5 a day and just love them. Got on a dates craze when I read something recently about how incredibly good for you they are. Glad he's stocking you up!
I'm generally eating healthier too. I think it's because when I order groceries, for some reason I just do not order any junk. That's probably because I'm actually thinking "need", not "crave."
I'm going to have to order some yeast from a local bakery that sells eggs, flour and yeast to the public. Unless I persuade myself to DIY, which looks very easy and fun. Here's a link if you want to try it (and don't miss the rooster!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wTt8VGyBdk
I wish I could send you a chunk of my yard, or hologram you up to weed my veggie beds! I loooove weeding too. It's painful these days with my back though, so I'm trying to find positions and methods that don't hurt as much.
Is there any strip of green, say near parking, at your apartment complex that a kind manager would allow you to turn into small veggie beds? Once you tell him your experience, and how you could also ring it with tidy flowers? Or any nearby bit of lawn, say near a business, that you could walk to? Bribe them with free veggies?
hugs
Hops
Hopalong:
I love the sense I get of your new home, CB...have since the time you first described it. I'm so glad about the trees, and the green spaces, and the light, and your tropical collection too. If you want to plant outdoors sometime, you'll find a way. Your daughter's balcony garden must be incredible; wish I could see it. And one of your sons like to plant too. That's so cool.
I first injured my back when I was 10 and jumped down a flight of steps on a ferry on the north sea, trying to impress some Scottish boy scouts. Landed on my feet but so very hard it compressed my spine and hurt like hell. I remember screaming "My back! My back!" and one of the Scouts thought I was yelling "My bag!" and kept waving my purse in my face: "Heere it is! Heere it is!" The pain was pretty intense but after my Dad carried me back to the cabin, I slept it off overnight. I did judo and riding during college, but nothing really jocky. The first severe (herniated discs) was in my 40s, heaving a huge potted tree into my truck (stooooopid lifting). Blew out two discs. Re-injured it over and over, just living life, and particularly when taking care of my parents. The last big "disc re-rip" was my Dad's last bath a few weeks before he died. Overnight he became too weak to help me get him out of the tub, and it was 3am and I wasn't going to make him wait for EMTs. So I bent over the edge and heaved him up and all way out. Rrrrrip.
I had five or six steroid xray-guided steroid injection treatments at a pain clinic just to keep going with Mom. Ten years at a computer all day in the horrible job during that period made it worse. Mom would lean on me like a cane, and I'd be getting on the floor over and over to find things, as well as lifting her off the floor when she fell (she never broke anything but she was hefty). It all just added up so my back is permanently fragile. I'm okay if I'm very careful and never lift anything heavier than 20 pounds. For good, I believe. But pain is easy to trigger, and the pratfall the other day just jarred it again. It's much better today than it was.
Gardening is extremely tough to do alone these days. But if I do a little little bit at a time and get help with the heavy stuff, I can still find pleasure in it.
All that complaining and I still find a whole lot of joy in looking at it all. My yard's big and shaggy and not well groomed, but it's also beautiful. People like being there and that's what matters to me.
Hugs
Hops
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