for the love of community

 it's been a strange year, i suppose. 

i've never lived alone before all this. i moved into a dorm in high school. then college, shitty punk house (nicolas cage against the machine will forever be the best and worst band i was ever in, love y'all), then finishing college.  

then i moved to brooklyn and spent nearly a decade and a half with an incredible man who is and will always be great--but we are proof that you can love someone so thoroughly, but we just never quite spoke the same language. and that's okay in the end. we have lunch most wednesdays before my bar shift.  i'm so lucky for that. i pray regularly that we can both find our happiness. he was before and is still my best friend. 

it's a little tough but what keeps me trying and moving forward is community. i feel like this world is so different than the one i was born in; the little rural town with unpaved gravel roads that gave me permanent calluses. trees and berry bushes and grandparents down the road with chickens and rabbits; neighbors who all knew everyone and traded off caring for each other. 

now I live in New Orleans and people seem so astonished that i know most of my neighbors and that we take care of each other as well. we have holidays together when we can't get to our ancestral homes. we make homes together as friends. people move from the area and still commune together and check on each other because we put the effort into community. even during covid lockdown, we made zoom groups and put in the work to remind each other that even isolated, we were never truly alone.

i'm a person who loves people and their stories and getting to experience this overwhelmingly expansive, beautiful world through others. 

when i got overly lost and felt isolated and confused about where my life was going during lockdown, i was so restless and struggled with sleep and accidentally found another community of people where we all just watched a stream of final fantasy games and commiserated and laughed and made the best of it together with a lovely combination of laughter and bad jokes and escapism. it's like we were all watching a long series of stories and sharing our own interpretations of each journey while also talking about our day to day lives et al--okay we mostly talked about food (marmite can go to hell), but it was all kind of beautiful.

that community will always be just as important to me. i've made friendships and met people i value as valid relationships as much as anyone i love and am blessed to see regularly. they were there for me when i was lost and struggling; the night my dad died, i called my friend erin that i'd met there, because i knew she knew the ununderstandable pain of losing a parent, and i didn't want to talk to anyone here who could show up in person as i needed to process on my own. 

then so many people from that community--seriously, people i'd never really interacted much with but showed me kindness, friends i've now even met and had drinks with, friends i've sent presents to their newborn babies, man, all the way to the dude who made/makes the whole thing happen who somehow makes time to give me thoughtful advice and keeps me in line when i'm getting too cocky.  i'm endlessly grateful for all y'all.

i'm also now so grateful for my work community. being in the veterinary field can be so incredibly fulfilling and brutally sad at the same time. my coworkers are both community and family. the things we go through day to day are so hard to try and share with others. we support others and each other and cry and make jokes the best we can when confronted with the worst and celebrate together when good things happen. my coworkers have taught me how to be strong and helpful and focused and capable, no matter what the day brings. also, we remind each other that even when we have to go through heartbreaking shit yet stay strong and comforting (i'm weirdly good at that part)--we also get to hold new puppies and celebrate the circle of life beginning again.

i have so much more to say, but i ramble too much as it is. i write a lot but usually just end up deleting it and sending it into the aether before anyone can find it. i'm just going to post this without editing because i have so much gratitude and i doubt anyone will see this anyway.

if you do and take anything from this, please let it be that opening up and letting people in and building a small community for yourself can truly help you to experience how wonderful this mess of a world is--and if you need a hand to help you feel it, i'm here and i see you and I'm listening. plus i'm an inimitable hype man who has your back. 

vague oracle vibes

 man, i keep having this strange feeling--my great grandma mawmaw bea always said this stuff happened; just accept it as a cajun woman haha--but i just have this feeling i can't shake that someone i love is about to make a bad decision that will somehow inevitably affect me too. i have been listening very carefully to those close to me, but it's nothing obvious. probably just me feeling a bit off. 

still unsettling, though. and i'm all for people making their own mistakes; it's how i learn best. i just keep feeling called to say or do something to stop something from happening, yet i can't even figure out what it is. it feels vaguely like this recurring dream i have where i accept that i fucked something up this life, but maybe i can get it right again next time. 

lots of "buts."

five hundred and five days

it's been nearly a year and a half since the world lost my dad. i thought it would be a lot easier, but honestly the grief became much more poignant this year. 

i'm okay most of the time, but sometimes i dream and i wake up to a different world and i can't catch my breath. i start regretting every time i almost went home and stayed because i lived in a major city/covid hot spot, and how if i hadn't insisted on moving about and trying to selfishly experience everything and stayed near my family, i could have had a little more time. i do always eventually remind myself that he wanted me to live my life as hard as i could. 

i also know that as much as i dream of five more minutes together, it wouldn't change anything. i know how much he loved me. i even feel like i know what he would say if we did have a few more seconds together. i know. it's just so overwhelming sometimes. 

constellations

 i have to apologize--even if just to future jessie, who will inevitably read back over this ages later to at the very least, cringe--i hate that i have only taken the couple of minutes to write anything publicly when i've been through something difficult. life is so much more, and i promise i know it. 

little struggles

i've been really terrible at keeping up with this. work has been really apeshit; we are shorthanded by two people every day and i have mostly been able to manage it but i've had a couple of really bad flare ups with this body that hates me sometimes and i don't want to complain. but my whole body hurts so bad and i can't afford to take any time off so i'm just kinda managing. but i'm grateful and love my job. 

i feel a little lost though. i work really hard to get through each day, and i appreciate that my work fam supports me and has my back, but i'm a softie and it's hard to shake things off sometimes. i had to hold my favorite dog when it was his time to go and his owners couldn't stand to be there. i slow danced to Africa by Toto with him in my arms til it was time for him to go. and he's happy and finally at peace with comfort, but man, it's hard sometimes. 

i'm also at this weird place in my life where i feel like i'm just going through the motions and feeling a little lost. i feel like i'm missing something. but i suppose it's a rite of passage. we are the bridge to the next plane sometimes. that helps. but mourning is important too. i say a lot of prayers these days. 

on chicory

 time is moving along. i recently found myself lucky enough to get a job working with animals at a veterinary hospital, and while i am so grateful, that's a story for another day.

most days are good; today was brutal. 

we had a lovely old cat who came in yesterday afternoon very sick. i spent what little downtime i had with her because she seemed to respond well to touch. we kept her overnight with fluids and medicine medicine and this morning started so well--she started eating again and moving around a bit. then we got a call from her family saying they'd decided overnight to put her down. it was crushing, but they didn't want her to be in pain anymore. 

eleven am rolled in, and while i was outside giving a quick bordetella vaccine to a pug, i noticed a man holding a cat carrier outside in the rain, talking to her in such a soft voice for such a muscular, broad guy. i promised i would be right back out for him. i came back out and asked him what was going on; he'd just recently gotten her from a friend who died unexpectedly--he said it was a sign because he had always wanted a cat. her name was chicory. i took her carrier and promised him we would take good care of her and that he could go--we'd call him as soon as we knew anything.

i took her into room two, opened the carrier, and tried to coax her out. she just let out a sad cry and was breathing raggedly and smelled like something ominous i couldn't place, so i picked her up and set her on the baby scale and she just kind of ...collapsed. i only kind of remember that i yelled for help and shauna ran in and went white and grabbed the doctor for me. 

the doctor walked up as i was trying to take deep breaths while comforting this sweet girl. she frantically started patting down the cat, looked me in the eyes, and said "this cat is actively dying. right now. she's pale because she's bleeding out somewhere." within maybe thirty seconds she'd located a big, hard mass lodged in her lower abdomen. likely a tumor she had been growing well before her original owner died. we immediately gave her some medicine to keep her going and comfortable enough while we waited for her owner to walk back.

many protocols and procedures were broken today. we let him come straight in to the hospital table with the heating pad where we were treating her. we all tried to keep our composure; i broke first when bringing him some water, having known his story. the doctor told him his options, but there weren't really any. 

i'm a person of hyperbole, i know, but when i say heartbreaking is not a strong enough word, i mean it with all of the heart i have left. when her owner said he'd just gotten her and couldn't even keep her alive, i had to excuse myself. i went out back and stole four minutes to cry alone (well, i guess the sky was sobbing a bit too), then went back in to help. we're supposed to be professional, but i couldn't help but pat his back a bit and remind him that this was long before him and he had done everything he could do and said a prayer in my head that he would be okay and that someday he would feel up to trying again.

everything was so somber after that. we had just ordered food as a group beforehand; i don't think any of us really ate when it came. we all stayed a bit teary-eyed and tried to mentally prepare to put down our hospital cat right after. we got her prepared and put in the catheter, and her family came. she'd been lethargic for days, but tried to walk right up to them with the catheter in, meowing. after a few minutes of deliberating, they decided to give us a few more days to try and make her better before giving up. so thankful for small mercies. 

and again and again, life goes on. i'll never forget this man and his chicory, who simply drew a difficult hand in life. sometimes things just aren't fair. but there are so many good things too and it's important not to let the darkness overtake the light, no matter how strong the eclipse. 

made me a tree

covid vaccine two has officially kicked my ass. i know it will be worth it and i'll be better soon, though. but every time exhaustion sets in, i succumb to weakness and let myself feel my feelings too hard. it's been four months; a third of a year. and i still think of my dad and feel his cold, dead hand in mine first before i force myself to hear his laugh and feel his warmth. 

please don't let this happen to me, universe. use my body any way that could benefit others, and share the rest with the earth with no pretense. maybe plant a tree and let it feed from my minerals. or just sprinkle my bones into the gulf. or shoot me into space. 

life might not have been super easy, but i will be in love with living until the end. that's how i would like people to remember me.