Does anyone else get as easily distracted, I wonder. I’ll sit down with a clear picture in mind of what I intend to write and when I’ve finished, what’s on the blog is something entirely different.
It’s why I have trouble telling stories, because in the middle of them I find myself going off at constant tangents. Leaving my audience stranded in all sorts of places, wondering where they got lost.
Maybe I have ADHD?
Well, it’s a bit late to worry. Just have to pay more attention to concentrating….
I intended a post about footprints in the snow.
This looks like a giant zipper. In fact I believe these were the marks left by a fleeing squirrel that was startled when Grant suddenly appeared at the door.
Tiny imprints left by the little birds that come to feed at my porch.
Snow began to fall again not long ago and immediately, a whole flock of different birds arrived, clamoring for food.
Which of course, they got.
How hard it must be, for birds.
This one didn’t make it.
I don’t know what happened, but when I looked out this morning there was this little frozen body.
Did his heart just stop as he sat there in the snow?
So sad.
Now he’s buried beneath the flakes. God speed birdy.
Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me. Just lately I seem to have heard so much bad news. A friend who said goodbye for the last time to his brother, dying of cancer. Another who lost her son and yet another hoping her own life will end.
I took aboard these sad tales with enormous sympathy. My heart goes out, it truly does. But it was only when I heard that the “Internet cat”, Little Bub had died that I began to weep. And when I saw this little dead dove, a tear rolled down my cheek.
How is it I shed tears so easily for animals and birds but when confronted with a human tale my emotion gets locked up?
It’s not that I feel less for human suffering.
Is my heart made of ice?
Like this?
One time when I was at a low ebb, I caught a local newscast about severe flooding in the area. Homes were being washed away. People were in trouble. But it was when I saw a film clip of some cattle, isolated on a patch of land surrounded by encroaching water, it was then that my heart began to break.
I couldn’t bear the thought of those terrified cattle, maybe drowning.
The day this happened, I had had to abandon anti-depressants for two weeks, prior to some medical procedure, so I was particularly vulnerable.
Yet here I am, all these years later, feeling as peaceful in mind as perhaps at any time in my adult life, and I am blubbering like a fool about a cat I did not know and a bird that happened to select my window outside which to leave its body.
Um. What does this mean?
I think I may have gone off on another tangent, but now I’m here, perhaps it’s worth asking if anyone identifies with what I have described?
By the way, this afternoon my replacement fireplace was installed. And it’s working.
It just requires one small adjustment…
If you figure out the mystery of your emotional response, please share! I’m the same way….
Oh, I so identify with how you feel about the animals that are in peril or have died!
I felt sadness seeing that dead birdy.
When I lived in another house, I used to find injured birds in my backyard and I always took them to a vet that took in injured birds and tried to save them.
I remember one time I was driving way over the speed limit to get a very badly injured bird to the vet before it might die.
Luckily I did not get a speeding ticket but the poor bird did not survive. (‘:
I always so enjoy your pictures of nature and the little birds and furry creatures!
Add me to the list of those that feel much the same as you do, Carolyn. And NO, your heart is NOT made of ice. I feel that I know you well enough to say that you have one of the warmest hearts I have ever encountered. No apologies for caring about animals ever again!
I think for some ( including me) feel so deeply about animal suffering because they depend so much on us, love unconditionally, and don’t have much control and probably understanding of what is happening. My heart hurts for human suffering, especially the homeless, but animals can break my heart. You shared your feelings so well, I don’t believe you have a heart of ice, be kind to yourself, you are worth it .
I also identify with much of what you describe. There is actually a name for people like us: Highly Sensitive People. Google the name of Dr Elaine Aron if you are interested in learning more. We experience everything very deeply.
I like the way priest and writer Andrew Greeley describes it. He said it is like having very thin skin. Skin is supposed to be a protective barrier. Those of us with thin skin absorb everything from the outside world into ourselves by osmosis. including the pain and suffering of other beings. If we allow ourselves to cry over the suffering of animals and not of other people, maybe that is just a way in which we protect ourselves from becoming overwhelmed.
To me, being highly sensitive is both a gift and a liability. I would not trade it away, but it is often hard to figure out how to live with it.
One of my therapists told me about HSP and I think I am definitely in that category. It isn’t easy, you’re right, but I don’t think would change anything either.