[JonInMiddleGA]

Long ass fucking post to my social media, reposting here. Apologies to those who get stuck with it twice.

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First, PLEASE nobody get worked up about this. I'm fine (enough) and/or will be. It's my wall, I'm just trying to vent my brain a little. Maybe it'll cut down on how today is rattling around in my head. It'll be long, and I'm gonna ramble, and I don't blame a soul if they just skip it. It's just me doing a little self-therapy in public.

I've gotten well acquainted with any number of things about grief in the past year so I feel like I've had enough time to form an opinion or two. And IMO, one of the toughest aspects is when you get triggered by something stupid.
Yeah yeah, I know, "nothing is stupid cause it's just how you feel". That's fine enough but that means I'm entitled to feel like something IS kinda stupid or at least ... trivial. Trivial enough that it really "shouldn't" be a trigger. And yet ...

Look, I'm just gonna tell this like it was, my apologies if I somehow unintentionally trigger anyone else. I don't mean to at all but I'm too aware of just how little of something it can take. I just don't know any way to get across how stupid this feels without the details.

I saw some fantastic news today about someone kicking cancer's butt. And that's always going to fill me with joy. It did today too, to actual happy tears even, for someone that I really don't even know.

And then I got bit by the stupid.

As I began to scroll on past the post one of the pics attached to the fantastic news, not even really looking at the pics to be honest, caught my eye. Or rather, what caught my eye was the base & wheels of the little pump contraption thing they use to administer chemo.

And without even seeing the rest of the picture or the contraption itself, I knew what those wheels were attached to. I mean, I _knew_. Like you know your own face in a mirror kinda know. I don't know if they're unique somehow or what, but apparently they're hardwired somewhere in the back of my brain.

And it broke me. Like I hadn't been broken in months. Waves of familiar emotions and a new one or too just as an added "bonus". By some stupid wheels that are probably supergeneric medical supply Part #123478-W.

That set the tone for my day which ended up with me getting allllll wound up over something related only by a winding tangent. (and those who've seen me get "wound up" know that ain't ever pretty) And then it took my stupid ass the better part of 8 hours for the light bulb to go on and realize "Oh. Wait. I'm not actually worked up about Thing X .... I'm worked up about recognizing those damned wheels, and how stupid it is for them to have knocked me on my ass"

Lemme parse this down here a second. I don't feel stupid (I don't think).
I feel more .. frustrated I guess ... . by the ability of minor trivial stuff (aka "stupid stuff") to create such havoc. I'n not the stupid, those wheels are.
They were just wheels. I know that intellectually, I'm even telling myself that emotionally. But if you showed 'em to me again tomorrow, I suspect it'd do it to me again.

And that, friends and loved ones, is why I really really hate this particular tiny little sliver of the whole grief process: cause stupid stuff is everywhere. And that makes it pretty hard to not feel like you're standing atop a long icy hill in ill-fitting slick bottom shoes, you're never really more than a little bobble away from sliding down the hill. And keeping your balance can get exhausting after a while.

Vent over. I love y'all, I appreciate y'all, and I'll be fine. I just needed to get some of the stuff in my head somewhere else to rattle around. Who knows, it might even work.