You guys (yes, that includes you, reader), it's Friday night. Applauding myself for writing earlier than Sunday, and ignoring the fact that I am usually working right now.
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What's that? Why am I not working? A story for another time, let's let the dust settle, mmmk?
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Oh, you didn't ask? No shit, this is a one-sided conversation, so let me entertain myself, damnit.
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Fine, I'll stop yelling at you now. (Not actually, I view most of my writing as a form of screaming into the abyss, and in this scenario, you're reading it in passing.)
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Now, just to decide what I'd like to gripe about this week. See, with all this newfound free time of mine, it would be silly for me not to absolutely pour myself into
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whatever speaks to me at that given moment. (If you're new here, those little lines mean time has passed. For everyone- it's Saturday morning, which is usually a time when none of my friends answer their phones to chat with me, so here I am.) Which, as I'm currently picking up where I left off last night, seems to be writing to you. (yea yea you're special, whatever.)
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See, I do enjoy writing, not always to prove a point, but more often to just get this shit out of my head. Having 80 HD TVs going at once (say it out loud, it kind of sounds like ADHD) means that if I can concentrate and get one thing out of my head (finding an outlet- which interesting outlets give power in the electrical sense.. maybe that's why having an outlet allows you to further what you're doing because it gives you power. [I think this power is just the privilege to get things out of your head so there is room {because our mind's bandwidth is, in fact, not unlimited} for new ideas to bud] So, interesting.)
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That was pretty convoluted. I'm really on one this morning with my parentheticals, and I think I should probably pause and eat something before I journey off into the land of my todo list (please pronounce it like the Spanish "todo" because it is everything.)
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Good (Sunday to me) morning from my couch, where I do most of my writing due to the aches and pains of being hyper mobile (It's not all fun and games when you can touch your toes without effort). I did finish most of my todo list yesterday, at least the everything that was important. It's important that I don't be hard on myself during times of transition, my body doesn't respond well to stress, and realistically, it will work out; it always has, there is no evidence to support any other option.
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I'm sitting here with dried tears on my face. I realize that I'm holding a ton of grief. Losing a job is tough, and it is still a story for another time, but regardless, emotions are real. This grief of losing a job and doing my own due diligence mentally, allowed me to soften up for the first time in a while. I pride myself on appearing to be tough. I've been through some shit, so I know I can handle a bunch, but strength through softness is so much more powerful.
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These particular dried tears were provoked by a video on the internet of a pig's life. This pig was a stranger to me, and the video started showing the pig later in life, struggling to use their back legs. For context, during the two years I spent finishing my degree at Hampshire College, I was also doing a work study as a livestock hand. I worked with cows, chickens, goats, sheep, barn cats, and, of course, pigs. We had raised two litters of piglets towards the end of my first year, and into my second, continued their care up until they were sent to freezer camp. A few weeks before they were set to get on a trailer, only to return to us vacuum sealed in plastic, one piglet in particular was having difficulty using its back legs- not dissimilar to the pig I saw in the video. The video went on to show this old, well-aged pig through all of the stages of their life, as a piglet, growing bigger, until finally it was only humane to say goodbye.
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As my final semester was wrapping up and I was preparing myself to say goodbye to this group of animals that both grew and shrank, news came to me that our boar, and his son, were to be slaughtered since Gus (the boar, his son's name was Cecil, I called him cece and I think he loved it.) did not successfully impregnate our two sows, Rosie and Violet (sister wives much?). Side note, they are sows because they had both had litters of piglets prior; if they hadn't yet been mothers, they would be called gilts. #pigfacts. Anyway, this news of their slaughter fascinated me. My main driving factor in choosing this work was my own diet over the years. I toyed with both vegetarianism and veganism, finally resolving to just eat what my body wants to eat, and as long as I was nourished, that's what mattered. I wanted to fix my relationship with meat, and honor these animals whose lives and deaths we cherish. This does not come without a huge consolation prize of guilt, grief, and glimmers. There is so much media exposing the cruel animal treatment in large-scale meat operations, but the actual beauty of raising meat sustainably is often overlooked.
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I opted to have a morning chores shift, something about waking up responsible for feeding something that would eventually feed me was so incredibly rewarding. Waking up Rosie and Violet for breakfast, sometimes unsuccessfully, and instead opting to snuggle in between two very large animals for a little warmth on a chilly fall morning, makes their children's bacon taste that much better. Bottle feeding our little runt, Pearl, who is now living in a yard in upstate New York, while her siblings climbed all over me, biting my pants, tugging on my boots, squealing, sniffing, and eventually falling asleep on my lap, well, that was so special. Pigs really are like puppies when they're small, and develop such personalities as they age. Gus was an interesting, grumpy, ornery old fucker, and although some of the other livestock hands weren't on such good terms, I like to think we were buddies. There was a mutual respect between us; I brought him breakfast, and he could bite through my leg to the bone. (For reference, his ear was bigger than my hand. Gus was a big boy.)
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I wrap this up by stating that although invited, I was unable to be present for Gus' departure from this earth, due to scheduling conflicts, and I have such deep grief for that. One student who graduated a year before me raised their own chickens, and when several of them needed processing, they hosted a workshop, and I got to help slaughter some chickens. It's not for everyone, the smells, sounds, textures, sights, but for me, it was everything. I needed this experience to cement my determination to form my own ethical understanding of consuming meat.
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Losing this job affectively allowed me to soften up, stop trying to protect myself, and allow space to process emotions. This morning, my grief was triggered by a pig, and yesterday I allowed myself to look at pictures of my grandmother, who passed in 2023, and sob. I didn't cry much when it happened. I was trying to keep myself together, be there as a support for my mother, sister, uncles, cousins, and especially my grandfather, with whom I was chatting, when grandma let out her last breath.
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Without taking too much more of your time, and saddening you with tales of my dead grandma, I will leave it at this- allow yourself the space and time to observe the dominoes that have fallen. Not just the fact that they fell, but look to the one who pushed it over, and the one before that. Don't just embrace your process, welcome it, maintain and honor it, and reset your dominoes.
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