Chickens…

I was sitting at a softball game the other night. How I got there is a whole other story since I don’t know shit about softball and I do not play. But I was there, nonetheless…and I didn’t really know anyone, so I was sitting there enjoying the slow fall of evening…while also freezing my ass off.

In passing, I overheard a conversation that I will not repeat here so as not to traumatize any of you other very sensitive people. But it resulted in the demise of a tiny chick. Now to all the people who heard the story, I am sure they are just fine and have not thought of the wretched awfulness of that story again. But I have thought about it constantly, at least hourly since I heard it.

Now, to be clear, I do NOT WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT! I didn’t want to hear it to begin with but I was faced with the choice I am presented with often, which is to hear the horrible thing that I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR or cause a scene. In today’s Erin, I do not want to cause a scene more than I do not want to hear it apparently. But I feel as I age this is going to change.

I suppose there is a middle ground where I just exit myself from the scene instead of causing one but in this particular case, there was no way I could have gotten outta there faster than the story unfolded. I mean from beginning to end the whole fucking awfulness only lasted about 2 minutes. And that 2 minutes now lives in my head forever. I will think about this story for months to come and it will revisit me for my life time. I know that is ridiculous but I am not in charge of it. I cannot rid myself of it, once I hear it or see it, it is permanent.

The firefighter I dated, sadly, told me of all his calls in my town that were traumatic and now I drive by those places and think about the people who died there even though I wasn’t there and I never met them. But they live on in my life as unrelated ghosts that haunt me nonetheless.

I do NOT want to have this level of sensitivity. I do NOT want to hold onto horrible chick stories forever. But I also do NOT want to be the person that tells an awful story like that and then just moves about her life. I do NOT want to NOT be this sensitive either. It is both a superpower and a kryptonite. Like so many things in this life, it is both and, not either or.

I have to be careful to shield myself form shit that I will never be rid of. I have to because if I don’t then I am just consumed with the trauma of this life, mine and other people’s. What I see and what I hear doesn’t leave, it becomes a permanent etching on the inside of my mind and I am forced to revisit it despite my constant unremitting pleas to the contrary.

I am just this way. There is no amount of toughening up I can do. I cannot disassociate from it. I cannot escape it, believe me I have tried. I also know that I am blessed with the ability to feel these things as deeply as I do…but I will also tell you that sometimes, a lot of the times, I would much rather be like the rest of the people who heard the awful story that just go on about their day as if the loss of a tiny little chick is unimportant in the grand scheme of things…really I do.

But I cannot, so I will not.

I am the kind of person who builds tiny braces for tiny chicks that have trouble with their legs. I am the kind of person that takes a sick chicken to the vet and spends a lot of money getting them well. I am the kind of person that moves a crippled chicken across the country with her and gives her medicine twice a day. This is who I am. I can’t change it even though sometimes I would really like to not care at all.

I will stop traffic to save a dog. I will pick up a litter of squirrels downed from a storm and take them home and bottle feed them. I will take in countless strays and other wayward animals in need of rescue, assistance and love. I can’t NOT do this. It would be a betrayal of self so grand that I really do believe it impossible.

I will also tell you this fact of me makes being me hard. It is an extreme sensitivity that most people do not get, think is funny to traumatize me with their hunting stories and do not respect my boundaries often. I can’t tell you how many times I have told someone, “if an animal gets hurt, please stop, I do not want to hear it!” And the person continues on, with barely a gap in conversation, casting aside my boundary, my feelings and my extreme sensitivity. Honestly when this happens, I really do feel on the verge of violence myself.

I have learned though that the people who do this are not my people. I do not have room for them in my life, which means my life has gotten a lot fucking smaller. A lot. I no longer want people in my life who belittle or berate me for this thing about me that I cannot control and have tried to “toughen up” for decades. No, instead I want people in my life who love me for this trait of mine. Who respect it and me enough to know that this is just who I am. This person who is devastated by the death of a tiny being who I never knew, never saw but now lives inside me, forever.

I did not want this curse and I am pretty sure if I were able I would give the blessing back also. But I can’t, so here I am. Stuck with the extreme sensitiveness that makes me delicate and fragile in ways that I can’t really describe adequately.

Sigh.

Again…still.

And after all this time, it has come to be one of the parts of me that I have struggled to accept about me. But it is a blessing and I know it, and I have learned that all beings in my life benefit from this trait of mine. I get how some of you just want the gift and not the burden. I have also learned that I get to decide I do not want those kind of people in my life. And finally, I have the ability and the self respect to not allow people, who cannot or will not understand me in this way, to just not be part of my life. On this issue, you are gonna have to meet me where I am. To honor it and respect it. And if you can’t, then you do not have a place in my life.

And I suppose that means I am choosing a tiny dead chicken over you. And I have made my peace with that…