I am very sensitive. Some say "over sensitive". I cannot watch any movie or television show with an animal at it's central plot, I know that at some point the animal will get hurt, or perhaps die.
I am particularly sensitive to animals because I feel like they look at us and ask "why?" when they have pain, or are victims of us: the human animal. I just can't stand it.
I don't even like thinking of pets that we had over 20 years ago that are now gone, knowing that they had to die. The dog I had just before the two wonderful babies I have now, had to be put down. I sat on the floor of the veterinary office and he lay with his head in my lap as he went to sleep. I cried and cried, telling him how sorry I was that we had to do this. I felt guilty for a couple of weeks. I cried in my sleep, and kept waking up to see if he was next to me on the floor by the bed.
And, I think we all hate Sara McLachlan now for those humane society commercials that can ruin a perfectly good afternoon of watching some ridiculous cable movie.
It is very windy today, the palm trees just outside of my fourth floor apartment windows, which face out on three sides of the building, are swaying like those blow-up men in front of a car dealership. The fronds at the top of the trees are giving any creature that flies near a real run for their money as they whip about in the wind making an audible "whip whip whip" through the air.
Written for the Patients for a Moment (PFAM) blog carnival
I cannot remember a time in my life that there was not some kind of stress. Stress is caused by many things, and causes many things.
Stress is the body's reaction to a change that requires a physical, mental or emotional adjustment or response. Stress can come from any situation or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, nervous, or anxious.
Living in my body, as is the case for many of us with chronic illness, was a hidden seed, waiting to germinate, waiting to sprout and grow. That seed was waiting for just the right conditions, the right fertilization, and the trigger it needed to begin it’s vigorous, invasive growth.
When you have a life full of stress, one thing after the other, just what stressor is finally going to be the thing that sets that seed off on it’s mad growth? For many, it is something like an injury, a car accident, a major illness, or surgery. For me, it was a major surgery followed by an injury. The saddest thing from my perspective is, I was perhaps experiencing the happiest time of my adult life. I was finally settled into a comfortable life that I could stretch my limbs out, be myself.
I did not feel the weeds creeping up inside of me from the surgery. My bipolar was stable; I had lost 175 pounds from gastric bypass surgery. I was planning my wedding, my daughter was happy in her new school, new home, new city. I was, however running myself ragged. I was working 40+ hours a week in an office that was 47 miles away from my new home. I was trying to plan the perfect wedding when I knew that my new husband’s family had zero desire to attend, or have the wedding happen. It was no surprise considering they had not spoken to us since I moved in with my future husband. So yes, I loved my life, but it was definitely full of stress. Stress I did not care to acknowledge.
Martin Luther said, "Be thou comforted, little dog. Thou too, in Resurrection shall have a golden tail."
When my eyes open to the slowly increasing vibrating alarm of the Up Band on my wrist each morning, I wake slowly. I push the button on the band and reluctantly stretch out my toes, and then my legs. My legs always meet resistance rather quickly. Warm resistance. The resistance behind my knees makes a small groaning sound. I smile. "Good morning Denny." Now my feet make contact with the larger, immovable, unwakeable mass of eternal puppy, Truman. Truman is always asleep on his back, legs akimbo.
I get out of bed, more concerned about disrupting their sleep and comfort than the possibility I could injure myself climbing over and around them. I just need to get my meds, then I can get back into bed for a couple more hours. When I return, Denny is in the same place, but Truman has moved to my pillow. After I slide him out of the way, it's back in bed, back to sleep.
Just a couple of hours later, I hear things in the apartment moving around. Brian is up and starting his day, the boys and I are deciding if we want to get up. They wait for me, we get up together. Some days Denny stays in bed a little longer, the old snoring man, no rush.
I am always accused of anthropomorphizing my pets. I give them very "human" names: Denny Crane and Truman Capote are my current, amazing Shih Tzu fur babies (for the uninitiated). I talk to them about everything from what I am doing at the moment, to what I am planning to do for the day. When things are bothering me or things are making me laugh or happy, I tell them about it. I don't talk to them in a voice that is silly or babyish, I talk to them like they are people. And, you may not believe me, but they listen.
When I talk to my dogs they look at me. They cock their little heads at just the right words, and when I go on too long, they do like many people do in my life, they fall asleep. That is, of course rare because I am so incredibly interesting. (wink)
“Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.” ― Gail Caldwell
My house of lonely is so very large. It has a room for each person I miss, each person that should be here, but isn’t. Rooms full of beauty, rooms full of laughter, rooms full of wonderful memories, and the promise of the memories we could have made. Then, the memory of the loss. The loss that happened in one giant scene of madness in a play that started as comedy and ended as tragedy. Or the loss that happened over time, a dripping faucet that finally filled the sink. I can walk by and see that last drop that spills over to the floor, that tiny drop creating a flood that can never be mopped up.
Some of the rooms are for people I simply don't see enough, but will see again. People I miss. That 
is a very tiny wing of my house, two rooms. The walls change in those rooms often. They change from walls papered with anxiety, and feelings of low self-worth, to raucous colors of laughter.
I only recall asking two people in my life to leave. Two people, very deserving I might add, in my real, and touchable life, to leave me. For them I have no rooms.
There are people I probably should have asked to leave, or who finally drifted away on their own far later than they should have, people who left wreckage in their wake. If they do have rooms, they are cluttered with heaps of garbage and the doors, though made of air like all of the walls in this house that grows and grows, still they walls and doors are so blocked I can never, thankfully enter. Sometimes, as I drift past, I can see between the piles of their crappy lives left behind, the symbols of our time together, the things that were perhaps good then but I see them as bad now. I see the things that were always bad but I was powerless to fight. They all remain up there, in that house, coming out at my quietest moments, coming out in what should be the comfort of sleep, like sledgehammers on my foundation. The wreckage some leave behind seems hell bent on destroying me, even years after their owners departure.
person, whom I have followed on twitter for sometime is, like myself bipolar, and on the blog the writer wants first and foremost to tell you that this is all a result of very limited medication, and wants to share with you many decades of bipolar experience along with methods of recovery. After this preamble there is a menu of items you can visit that include things about the blogger that appear to be justifications for how bright we need to know all of this mishegas compounded together creates some sort of air of authority.
