Why don't you just...

stfu

Dear Diary,

Trauma journaling is one of those things I've always heard of and have done occasionally but don’t take seriously because I can intellectualize everything and therefore don't have to do the emotional work on the page. It's all in my head and I’m not forced to get uncomfortable with feelings and stuff.

 *(discovering migraine cause #76. No more room in cranium)

I know now that it would benefit me to brain dump before bed and first thing in the morning to clear out that tank. Will I? Maybe. Could it occasionally wind up in my posts here and on Patreon? Yep.

The tiny snarky passive aggressive editor who lives rent free in my head says, 'is that what people want to read? Maybe a little more Irma Bombeck...self deprecating observational humor ish...DIGESTIBLE" 

Do better. A tidy, short, clever anecdote about how the dogs have eaten most of the pee pads someone sent before they were even unboxed. That’s cute! Meh. I have spent a lifetime editing myself and being edited…I want this to be a space of authentic feelings and working through this odd situation I'm in while stuck in the desert living with street dogs. Learning about myself and the human condition is not always tidy nor clever. Also, you can not read it.

So anyway, the pee pads hahahaha, “Why didn't you put them in a cabinet with a lock?” someone asked. 

Trigger was the name of that horse. Someone channeling my mother? Have we met? There’s no “cabinets” in this place. I hate being defensive…but also! Having 14 dogs in a rescue (which is actually an office) is too many. A little distracting. Hard to predict for...I've never had pee pads before. I didn't imagine they'd rip open a cardboard box with plastic shrink wrapped waterproof things inside 10 minutes after they arrived. It's not a bag of bloody bones. But I know now that they have an "attractant" sprayed on there to literally be catnip for dogs. Next time I'll know. 

But all I can hear is, It's My Fault. 

Can't you just BUY a cabinet? or coffee? Or butter? Or shoes? I wish. But no. 

I know. It's hard to believe. It's all the things you'd imagine about a third world country. No potable water, no services. I've been here a year so I've mostly made peace with the frustration of being off a delivery route and not having retail stores or an address. How can a place not have an address? Every time someone asks me to explain, I'm confronted with how it's a terrible place and I should leave because there's no TJMaxx for me to buy French milled soap made in China. Oh and I don't have a car for the first time in my life. Also there is no taxi service nor bus. Even the courier guy quit.

There are a couple stores but they are just fronts for trafficking, it's very obvious. If you want to buy a broom, that you can find. One brand. In all stores.Take it or leave it. Saute pans at $70. Shopkeep doesn't want you buying those and then he'll have to put another pan in there. The fruit store only has old bananas, fruit flies and empty shelves, I've even tried to buy one of the shelves from the owner. NOPE he said. I might need it one day and it's too hard to find things here on the Dry Island.

Only 5 hours (depending on whom you ask) to Nogales and the border to cross then another couple to Tucson why don't they have the things??? It may be by design. It's a town on the water and if it had shops, restaurants, mail delivery, produce it would be full of people. Gringos. Investors. More police. Folks asking questions. Buying land. Just my theory. 

Thankfully I lived in rural Georgia for a long time. No wine selling, dial up, landline, purple drink in the grocery store rural Georgia. But I could get Amazon. And I had $$ back then. I felt like I was in the dark ages. Here I'm on the moon. 

Pretty much each furnishing idea, inquiry or solution to endless problems is a wall. I know why people don't spay their pets! There's no vet. I'm the only one who makes my patio, kitchen, living room into an OR for the Saturday sometimes vet who comes in. 

I recently had to fasten a piece of old metal to a wall to make a hook...A HOOK! so I'd have some place to put clothes, towels etc. it's ridiculous I know, but I didn't make the rules. Command Hooks? Never heard of them. And do I want to order a $10 thing for a $10 delivery and a $15 courier fee? Nope. 

I'm not a huge consumer but I'm still an American and I am totally habituated to just heading to Lowe's, the Dollar Store, Marketplace, Publix deli, a bread store, the cheese aisle at Sprouts, pizza joint, Amazon and a plant store and Gittin' er done! But here you have to git er done with a stick and flip flops. That's why no one does anything. I get it now. Why would you paint a sign for your business? There's no paint, there's no wood. But I'm here for the project and these orphan dogs. Not to make an Insta worthy pantry. (even tho I would LOVE a pantry)

So Solution Sally that I am, it's just a tad limiting. And you hit your head against the wall a lot. *(migraine clue #79? hitting head against wall) but every time someone says..."why don't you just..." I feel my face get hot.

I still yearn to redecorate and have what I need to make my life easier. I just got my first package delivery because someone finally trusted me enough to "loan" me their address in the city. It's just the way it is. Six months in, I realized that it's mostly unfixable and a waste of energy to try and fix it. If I had a car I'd be a courier I think...but then I talk to the guy who was doing it who quit...gas too high, some days no one came, road washed out, got a better job in shrimping---all good points. I have a tendency to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titantic. Surely there’s A WAY! Sometimes you have to just abort mission. And without seeing that this sort of backwater place exists, it’s hard to imagine.

Continuing my coursework in Somatic Trauma Release, I recognize when the gaslighting editor comes into the chat. It may be just how I hear it, I've recently been studying RSD which is Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria---basically Butthurt on Steroids 2.0. When asked why the dogs could get to the pads…A normal person would say, 

Because they're wild dogs and there's a pheromone sprayed on the pads and I have no furniture. Duh.

I will ruminate on it for days. Shame and blame, why I wasn’t faster, smarter, more resourceful…If I don't catch myself, unvalidation unravels into defensive shame.  Explaining all the reasons why this goofy town in the desert doesn't have a fucking Home Goods store is a waste of time I don’t have. I don't know how many ways to explain that I can't find a tshirt, a pizza or domesticated dogs, shoes, leashes, bowls, boxes, liquid soap or clothes hangers. They don't call Mexico the Upside Down for nothin'.