Getting to know you weirdos meme

[attackfish]

Ganked without attribution from people on other people's f-lists

I know very little about some of the people on my friends list. Some people I know relatively well. But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's Parker ...she likes money and cereal." I'd love it if everyone who's friended me did this. (Yes, even you people who I know really well.) Then post this in your own journal [only if you feel inclined]. In return, ask me anything you'd like to know about me and I'll give you an answer*.

*Providing it's answerable/suitable for public posting.

Comments

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Livejournal doesn't like biblegateway. This got caught in my spam filter. Thanks for the quote. I bet I can use this when people get all obnoxiously Calvinist in their whole "God rewards the righteous, and if you were a better person, you wouldn't suffer so." Course, they're usually so freaked out by a Jew quoting their scripture at them that they don't pay attention to the scripture I quote.

I personally think to be rational in this world is to be pissed off.

I hope for the sake of their souls that those horribly hurtful words were a misguided and ignorant attempt to get her spirits up.

Mom usually heard it from people who were trying to guilt her into not asking for help, because in the insane troll logic universe they claimed we lived in, if she really loved her kids, she wouldn't need any help. It was just one more justification they used to abdicate any responsibility.

The thing is, I've never been the caretaker for another human being, and I have only second hand experience with my mother's difficulties caring for myself and my brother, but I have nursed quite a few animals through long term and terminal illnesses (it comes with having seven birds and eleven dogs) I have lost birds that for more than a year before they died, I had to hand feed every day. I've lost dogs that I've had since I was a little girl, and who when the medication was no longer able to deal with the pain, I had to decide to put to sleep.I've taken care of a dog who had to be held up while he peed, had to have his bowl held up to him when he ate, who had to relearn how to walk, and who was terrified of me, because he had been abused. If I didn't love them, it wouldn't hurt. I wouldn't spend every waking (and a lot of unwaking, I tend to dream about my charges dying, and I know Mom did too) moment worrying, and running over and over every possible thing I could do to make it a little better. How would love possibly make it easier? It makes you do it, but it makes it so much harder.

Oddly enough, one of my White Lotus fics (I figure this is far down enough in the thread that no one is going to casually run across this) has as one of its themes that trust isn't about truth and belief but about giving somebody the power to hurt you, and the difference between love and trust. So this has been, from a completely different angle, on my mind lately. I'm really interested in reading your essay, and I'm really flattered you would want to dedicate it to my mother. She's actually a huge LotR fan, and Eowyn is one of her favorite characters. The idea of "love as a battle" in caregiving is really fitting. When you're caring for someone, and everything is going wrong, and you're terrified they're not going to make it, you face down the world, fate, death, darkness and pain, even God to say no, you will not win. And sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes, not often, it does.