I'm feeling heartsick this week.  Last week was difficult and this week was worse.  I am fortunate to live someplace peaceful, to have a job that supports me, to have a husband who loves me, to have enough money in the bank to not worry, to not live in fear that I will be apprehended and beaten or killed by the police, to feel safe.

The world has turned upside down these past five months and I'm having a hard time coping with one thing on top of another.  There is so much fear and anger and violence in the world and I want to duck my head and hide inside myself.  I feel powerless and hopeless.

I go to work and I help people.  Yesterday I talked a patient through a procedure that terrified her.  We got the procedure done;  her treatment will be easier now.  I did something good and it seems like not even a drop in the bucket compared to all the anger and fear in the world right now.

The big guy pointed out to me that I don't have control over the world just over myself.  True.

I'm not stupid or uneducated and yet I am continually shocked by the amount of hatred in the world, even though I feel hatred towards others at times.  So I am shocked that there are others, just like me, who are scared and angry.  What differs I guess, is what we're afraid of.

I try so hard to be a good person, to be compassionate, to be kind and still I get angry and anger feels like the antithesis of compassion but I suppose it's not really.  Anger may be the antithesis of compassion but perhaps it's what you feel anger about that decides if it is truly the antithesis.

At work I get angry when people treat patients poorly, when they make patients who are dying of cancer wait.  I get angry at work when I watch a certain doctor treat people like shit.  When he is rude and condescending and unpredictable.  I get angry with my children when they lie to me, when they freeze me out because I am not who they want me to be.  I get angry with tRump when I watch him
lie and shit on people, when his incompetence gets people hurt and killed.

I can take criticism, I don't like it but I can listen.  I do judge people and I do hold a grudge over time but I am also willing to change my mind and apologize as well.  I do dwell on the bad things in my life and I have been battling this for twenty or more years.  I recognize it though and I try.  I am impulsive which combined with my thin skin and fear of rejection gets me into a lot of trouble.  And my anger, sometimes is justified and sometimes is just fear.

I'm human, neither good or bad, just human.  But aren't we all?  And that's where I get into trouble.  I see people do terrible things and I know I have done terrible, hurtful things.  I see people struggle with their worst selves and I do the same.  I have a hard time separating myself from others and yet I feel so separate and alone from others.

So yes, it's been an awful week watching people do horrible things and kind things to each other.  It's so confusing.  It feels like some part of me is still a child trying to figure out why my parents are fighting and why my mum is crying and me just feeling scared and alone.

So I garden and I plant flowers and I pull weeds and I try to stop feeling so much and I try to remember to breathe.