trying to clarify what is bugging me lately.
Carol · Sept 26, 2012
you know...that post below wasn't really accurate to what i was feeling...my current human burn out and pettiness is bigger than that. i don't really care all that much if i get honorary mention in the animals passings or not. i actually do much prefer generic condolence comments that either simply state your own peronal feelings of loss or sympathy for the group alltogether...staff and volunteers who may keenly feel the same sense of deep loss.
i don't like the sometimes sense of imaginary ownership here...that somehow any animal belongs soley to one particular person or a small exclusive group of certain people...that is untrue. none of these animals belong to anyone cuz if they did, they would be in a home of their own and not here.
many times when someone dies, i see post after post of deep sympathy exclusively to that areas volunteers...it is like one or two mornings on the weekends committment was the only worth mentioning relationship these animals made.
so what about the people who cared for them when the volunteers are not here...the other 21 hours a day, 5 or 7 days a week? is the assumption that our anmals live in an emotional vacuum without any other relationships worth noting?
i am not saying that special relationships between humans and animals are not made here...jelly adores KO's volunteer days, jesse loves being with mo or renee, marvin waits for tammy's extended lap time, and daphne's highliight of the week is when jenn is here. BUT these are not the only people who love them...these are not the only people who care for them, these are not the only people physically and emotionally invested in loving them. and these are not the only people who will one day grieve for them and feel their loss.
this week has been a bad week for me being bombarded with various individual human emotional needs and the one that always gets to me is the exclusivity of caregiving priority. i am the only one who cares...i am the only one truly committed...i am the most important one because i love this one or that and they love me back.
if this was true, the animals would be screwed because none of them could survive or be happy the other 140 hours of the week when that special someone is not here. given a choice, daphne would choose to be with jenn over me but that does not erase the night after night of her sleeping safely and well loved tucked into my side or the hours that KO carries her around in her arms....especially when it is rainy or cold.
everyone comes and goes here...most of us have lives outside of saints...we work, we go on vacations, we have homes that we go to with our own families there. no one has the exclusive right to feel more loss or more important to that animal than the rest..except maybe for me. people sometimes do forget that as janice said...i am actually the one who stepped up to the plate and made the life long commitment..i am the one who did give them a home and if i am willing to share and recognize the many relationships that others have with them..why is not everyone else?
when these guys pass..i am not hurt more than someone else..but i also do not feel their loss or care less than others feel and this is true for all of us here. there is not just one or two people caring for each animal here...there is a small army, that we are all part of on the days we are here and on the days we are not.
to think love and concern and care are exclusive to only our individual selves is incorrect and disrespectful to everyone else. that is what is really bothering me..the unrecognized and unacknowledged caring of others..this has always been a group effort, we are too large for anything else.
The final "S" in S.A.I.N.T.S. is for Society and it seems to me that it truly is a society that takes care of these animals (much like it takes a village to raise a child).