multiple choice

[fflo]

susanstinson's cat Black Kitty died. She wrote of the loss in her blog. Sad.

I am put in mind of an old exchange with kind counselor I revisit often. The deft touch of it, along with its underlying point, impressed me even in the immediate aftermath of its occurrence.

Back a coupla years ago when things were in such turmoil for me, I found myself having many moments of worrying that my older cat was about to up & die---beyond what his health problems at the time merited. This channeling of fear, squirrely as it was, at first went towards practical questions, like what to do if the ground was frozen when such a thing would go down, even more than to underlying feelings along the lines of the (false) thought "I couldn't take it!" False cuz of course I could take it. I wouldn't want to take it, but, you know, when bad things happen, we take it. What else can we do, and how can we not do? The fact that life goes on, if it does, is sometimes a horror in its own way, but that doesn't undermine the factuality of the continuation, even if fear of some potential amorphous unbearability may abide right along with it.

Anyway, I'm digressing. The conversational snippet was me saying something like "I don't know how I could handle it," prompting her brilliantly simple nugget: "How would you want to handle it?"

Poof. Turned an "either-or" into the proper type of question, if a question had to be asked: multiple choice. You come up with the options; you influence the selection of answer or answers, to whatever extent you get to, or have to. Which, even if it's only a little, is something.

That moment was worth weeks of co-pays, easy. And now I give it to you, reader, gratis, fwi may be w to you. And just to note it again & celebrate it a little myself.

And it sounds like some of Susan's choices, in an actual aftermath, have been good ones.

Comments

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

when i got zeus, i was obsessing over how i'd handle his death....but maybe that's a little different, since he's so big? dunno-- it was extreme. and of course i haven't fully resolved it now, because i do not know the day, hour, or circumstances under which it'll happen, but i no longer dwell on it. (I mean, i thought of some general ways to deal, and then let it go.) hmmmm.. i never thought of the frozen ground thing! must be michigan-specific. actually, my dogwalker told me she froze her cat's body and later had it cremated.

also, during some major breakups, i have dreamt about my dog (cooper, later birdie) being in danger, or (in waking life) felt really nervous when i left the house, just feeling like something "could happen" to the dog when i was gone.

i think i just heard zeus farting in the hall. no kidding. big dog, ya know.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

well, considering you adopted an old dog with serious health problems, it's probably not exactly nutty to ponder practical concerns around his demise, should you indeed outlive him. but, yeah, i guess it's classic to project stuff on to our little being-objects with so much project-onto-ability.

and, y'know, worrying, whether it's "intended" (in that psychological function way) to do so or not (and surely some of the time that's what it's doing and why it's doing it), takes us out of the moment. so if you buy that being in the moment, when you can "bear" it, is a preferable way to be, worrying is an enemy to be taken on. (and worried about? ha ha ha ha haaa)

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

this is not to make light of any of susan's stuff. i'm sorry to hear about her kitty, and will check out her journal.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Oh man, now you've done it. :-]

I go through similar exchanges in therapy. I seem to have a long history of convincing myself that I "can't handle" things. This is largely because I like to have an excuse for my various kinds of self indulgent behaviors that I "need" in order to deal with things. As you point out, I am perfectly capable of dealing with things, even terrible things.

In the end, I decided that terrible things are always worth dealing with if there is even a single moment of happiness on the other side.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

It's not like you can really choose not to deal. You can choose to deal by methods of avoidance of consciousness---and I'm both guilty of that & not harboring any delusions (or even desires) that I'll be giving it up fully, ever---but there are rewards to dealing by facing shit. I'm not thinking of happiness so much as of an absence of something that robs you of presence (or the present) & leaves its own trail of difficulties to deal with later, in whichever ways you manage those.

such generalized blathering... good thing i have few pretensions to Depth in comment exchanges, ain't it?

[wednes.livejournal.com]

LOL

Right you are. There are big rewards to facing shit. I learn this every time I get it together to go to EMDR. Hard work, but big payoff.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

my friend chris did this for me once in texas, early on. i said, "i don't know anyone whose situation is so complicated" and she said, "ok, so your situations is the hardest and there's noone like you. what then?"

i think it's one of those days now too, only i've been through it before and i'm finding myself sounding really tedious (even to myself), partly because this is what i "chose for myself." that's always hard to remember.

chris now lives far away, among foreign people.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

maybe one of chris's foreign people has a little gift like that he/she's giving her this week. anyway, i wish i had one for you. a magic one, wrapped up in a little box, like those boxes a ring or earrings might get wrapped up in. not the fancy presentation boxes for the proffer of the prototypical wedding ring. just a little box with a little piece of that fluffy cotton sheety quilty stuff, some of which comes off and sticks, a little funny-looking, to the magic gift, endearing it to you all the more. but you still pluck it off, cuz you want a nice clean magic gift to pin to your front and wear around for the rest of the difficult day.

yes, i probably should get to bed...

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i think just hearing that people believe i won't starve is pretty good. i don't see it, and i've lost much of my optimism, but i like to hear that people i trust still believe i won't starve. i also don't want to offend all of them by implying constantly that maybe they should re-think why they believe what nobody else believes, but somehow my big picture transmission has stopped.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Earth to O: big picture transmission on the fritz, but signal will be restored long before any actual starvation, which (Lisa to O:) ain't gonna happen. And a slew of other scary outcomes are also most unlikely, at least.

So say all of us! All of me, anyway. About to pass out.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

all of y'all! that's good. i think i'll feel better when one of these big chunks is done.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

you know, they could really improve on this whole grad school thing by simply cutting down how much you're supposed to plunk into those tomes. it'd just take the first generation of people who'd been through it themselves deciding to forego the satisfaction of seeing the new pledges have to eat the goldfish, fuck the hole in the ground, or do whatever other fraternity crap you wanna compare it to.

i mean, really. must so MUCH scholarship be required? haven't you all been through enough already, teaching 20 year-olds from the Best families, and living in ann arbor?

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

you speak wisdom, but it is the natural-born scholar that each and every one must prove to be! from dawn till dusk, and through the night, writing away and thinking NEW ideas! new new new! so new you'll never know it! that does come with being from a Best family, it seems, somewhat more naturally than it comes to the gutter individuals such as myself. although one continues to hope for miracles, of the caliber that have directed the gutter in this direction.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

shit, girl. you're losing it. might be time to play the "yugo" card after all! ha ha. (tried to find that talk to link to but couldn't...)

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

if i'm going to play the yugo card, it's going to be in yugo. life's ugly enough already to be pretending to be a yugo of that kind.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

i've got a compromise for you: play the yugo card in A yugo. if there are still any around in the States.

ha

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

nah. somehow this is all about the final divorce from all things yugo, including the clunky vehicle. what can't be genetically removed can't be helped, but otherwise that show seems to be over for me.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

you took that show on the road... and the touring company version barely resembles the original, i'd bet

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

probably not at all. and i haven't been interested in touring in ages. i'd never tour again if the founders didn't live back in the alleged base.

p.s.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

if some of that "chose for myself" stuff is expecting to be punished, as you've been told so much you'll surely be punished, and everyone "back home" expects you to suffer for your crazy choosing, well, i can relate.

Re: p.s.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i think that's part of the problem, as i may have explicitly mentioned to you (i know i did to tiramisu e): it would be ruefully ironic if all the people's people would be proven right (that this is too much, that it can't be done, that it's not worth the "suffering").

tiramisu e believes, as he always does and i do (obviously) on most days, that people's people don't know what they are talking about, which is probably true, as they've never seen anything and never tried anything.

it's also, again ironically, about being from a national literature in which nothing ever changes and nothing ever can. that i find to be a great burden.

Re: p.s.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

that WOULD be most ruefully ironic, i grant ya

you have me wondering which part of my national literature is most burdensome. i think i've got more than one option that way. and maybe that's it: the illusion of choice.

but, again, fog shrouds me noggin. 'sbeen that kinda day, brain matter wise speaking.

i like "people's people". i guess nontiramisu e, a.k.a. homovegetarian, will have her anthropological observation thereof soon, and (partly) in the forum of that venerable social institution of a hitchin'. oh to be a fly on the wall myself. (do people's people have such an expression?)

Re: p.s.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i think there might be either something quite similar (мува на зиду) or nothing at all. i'm not sure.

i would hate for the people's people to be right, being how hideous their lives are. their lives ARE hideous because they think the lives can't be any better and they never even try.