Mother Nature is a C*nt

Yesterday my dog assassinated a vole in front of a seven year old girl and an infant getting their family photos taken at the park. Because he is my dog, I am sure the children are probably/maybe/definitely scarred for life. When you roll with a terrier, you have to get used to things like tiny monogamous mammal slayings and the psychological maiming of wee onlooking moppets.

People of a certain type like to imagine the universe in general, and nature in particular, as being fundamentally good, safe, even caring, but the same universe that may now be allowing you to work your dream job, or bump uglies with your one true love is also allowing otherwise sweet-natured terriers to toss half-dead and still screaming rodents in the air—joyously, might I add—in front of sheltered and impressionable children. It’s allowing hurricanes to destroy entire islands while tolerating the continued existence of a certain senile despot who shall remain nameless. Mother nature, in short, can be a bit of a cunt.

I’m currently wrestling with the whole brutal unfairness of life thing, and it’s not because I had some kind of cockeyed delusion that I could expect any kind of fair treatment from life. That ship sailed when I understood that almost none of my peers had to get their clothes from a giant black Hefty bag full of boy’s hand-me-downs and that my favorite mouth breathing Arian bully was going to get to go to private school despite having the IQ of a mentally deficient potato and the personality of Himmler with a toothache. (Brian W., if you are reading this, if you even can read, go fuck yourself. I mean it.) Fair has simply never been part of the equation, and yet….

And yet…here I am again, worrying at my bullshit like a terrier with a newly dead critter. It’s called rumination, and man, I must say, it’s just tits. 

Rumination, or repetitive thoughts is a symptom of both depression and anxiety disorders. It’s basically your brain’s super-helpful way of carving a pain-groove into itself. You know. For funsies. Right now my brain is constantly reminding me that I won’t ever be able to have kids, which is something it virtually never mentioned in all the years before I had my emergency hysterectomy. It also likes to remind me of all the dumb, horrible peckerheads who can’t seem to stop having, and ruining, their very own children. And global climate change. And the threat of nuclear annihilation. It’s like living to a bunch of frat boys with a souped up sound system playing Radio Doom 24-7 and the cops don't care.

Thanks, brain. 

It’s illogical. It’s crazy town, actually. The rational part of my brain’s saying “No kids? Awesome! We can move to Amsterdam, write novels, and get blazed every night, and it literally won’t matter because you have no substantial responsibilities. This is great news! Wait, what? You’re crying again? Why the fuck are you….? Amsterdam, motherfucker!?!” 

And so on. Depression doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for sense. Natural selection only favors making more of a thing. Doesn’t give two rats fucking in a wind tunnel about the mental health and wellbeing of the thing past making more. And so we have lovely conditions like chronic, recurrent depression and fibroid tumors and ovarian cysts that show up in midlife and look alarmingly like cancer and crippling anxiety and on and on and on. Because, and it bears repeating, Mother nature is a bit of a cunt.

So, what to do? Because I’m certainly not just going to lay back and take this hot, steaming mass of bullshit. Right now, I’m just trying to keep focused on really basic bitch stuff---things like making sure I drink enough water, and take walks and shit. As far as the rumination end, I’m keeping busy. It’s hard to fall too far down the despair rabbit hole when I have an extensive to-do list, yoga, meditation, and writing. Not impossible, but harder, and some days, that’s all I need.