i read a book a few years ago about highly sensitive people. they struggle thru life with these super sensitive brain receptors that almost seek out and collect certain sensitive specific to them stimuli...it is like a huge stimulus magnet that continually burns them....like getting too much sun, it ends up being painful.
for some folks it was noise or sound..for others it was taste or space and for some it was emotions...but whatever it was, their receptors to it were like super sensitive funnels of never ending stimuli and resulting discomfort. i meet a lot of animals who are the very same.
sometimes i wonder if underneath my obsession with nursing and rescue lies a super sensitivity to picking up and receiving the feelings of dis-ease from others. is that why i feel the need to go to the wall to minimze dis-ease and distress and substitute it with comfort and at least some kind of well balanced happiness?
i know damn well that the reason i left my marriage was because i was tired of living surrounded for almost 30 years with discontent and unhappiness. in a positive energy environment, i can be happy, pretty much anywhere...including an overfull, busy and chaotic at times animal shelter...but constant and irredeemable negativity eventually sucks me dry so i am consistent now in not letting it take root here and grow in my life.
i don't need to have the perfect life...but what i do need is a few hours of peace and contentment around me each day.
it has taken phoebe six full years to find some peace and contentment inside herself each day. she still has her moments of high speed wanting and need, of utter frustration and the need to make someone bleed..but on the whole she is far better now than she was several years ago. now i am more likely to expect and accept that emotionally she is quite often content and the bad moments are now just momentary freak storms that quickly come and go less and less often.
has she healed herself? no..i think she is just growing old.
anyway..the more relaxed she becomes, the deeper our relationship grows. it is so much easier for me to fully love someone without all of that angst attached..phoebe and i no longer get sucked into and swallowed by her emotional turmoil....it is nice not to worry and stress about it so much any more...and while it seems like it has been a very long road....six years invested is far less than 30 so i am pretty happy with that!
i got a very small, gentle and brief tail wag from abbey just now when she stood in the doorway to look at me and i said hello. then she shut down and turned away to ponder and worry some more over this sudden unhappy upside down turn in her life.
sucking up to this dog with special treats is not going to work...altho she is happy to gobble the treats with no committment to happiness on her part. this dog's brain works differently than the not so quite as smart ones.....i am afraid like phoebe's..it maybe full of natural discontent, nonspecific longing and negative thinking.
these types of dogs are not a pain in the ass..they are a chronic pain in the head. please god don't make me live thru this again for another 5 or 6 years until the natural aging process takes over and smooths off the sharp jagged edges..by then i too will be old!
if i were to define my role in this life...it is a seeker of peace, comfort and warm gentle light. that is a hard thing to consistently find when surrounding oneself continually with animals in the midst of crises in dealing with their own upside down lives.
why did i never see before the sweet and gentle and peaceful value in quilting or gardening?
hah..i just got up to cover phoebe up and the answer to this has occured to me....every time i get to my feet..the animals join me by getting to their feet...hah and hah..tulips and quilts don't give daily cheerful and excited, full group participation, standing ovations. too funny...today will be a happy day for most of us i think...just abbey (and the still boringly caged cats) will think today actually sucks.