I have started the research process of why we used and when we started using mice and labyrinths for behavioral studies. I stopped myself. For now. It’s too fascinating and also too cruel to continue. I’m going to want to continue forever. There are mouse behavioral scientists. People who sit and plop mice into scenarios and record their every sniff in a corner and move they make to guess why it did it. Mice swim by instinct. This I didn’t know. Never once have I thought of dropping a mouse into a tub of water with a man made platform to see if it will get to then platform and how. I still do not want to do this to a mouse. In fact I think they should stop doing it to mice. We can’t do it to people? Mice are simple minded and can’t express their concerns with this process so we just use them? It seems cruel. All animal testing seems cruel. This is why I stopped. It was taking me down a path of knowing too much about cruelty to animals so we can compare them to us people. People can say why we smelled the corner before we turned left so we don’t use them. It’s less researchy.
I wanted a maze and I got one. Not a trail in the woods at all, but what I thought would be the painful process of registering 3 kids in 3 separate schools with 3 separate ways of learning this year. My oldest with special needs is in person. Her classroom is the only one in the entire school coming. Like 6 kids in a building meant for a thousand. My middle son is remote learning which won’t work. He is hands on and needs in person. Not to say he will fail but the system is going to fail him. My youngest is pretty much going to daycare all day long and the daycare will administer her remote learning as well so I can keep growing plants. She is sort of spirited and doesn’t sit well so I’m not sure how this will go for her. But she is young and adapts well so she might, except I don’t her I can’t sit still curious spirit crushed by sitting.
Navigating the process was like being in a maze. Each school had tables and shelves to coral us like cattle to get to places so we wouldn’t wonder astray and touch things and people. I felt like exactly what I felt like, a mouse in a maze. Not like cattle being coraled but a mouse in a maze. Cattle are too close to each other when coraled. We can’t be close to each other. They released us 7 at a time into the maze of registration. Plopped in it to see what we would do and how we would behave so they can make us behave even more. They even studied us. People standing around every corner to say no and not to and where to. It was not to see what we would do it was to make sure we wouldn’t do anything. But I got out. Through and alive. Alive is a little dramatic except I don’t feel like I was exposed to a deadly virus so I say alive.
My turtles aren’t dead. I thought they were because they were not moving. Not moving to me I suppose means dead. They were playing dead? That sleepy. They are too small and miss their mom? They were found while digging and now are swimming and playing dead in a little tank in my kitchen. When they were dead I covered them with a towel and told myself someone would have to remove them. The turtle coroner? I needed someone to look closer and confirm death and remove them so I didn’t have to. I don’t have a lot of pets so that when they die I don’t have to take care of them dead. I can’t. I want everything alive. And they were. I came back to remove them later since I don’t actually have anyone let alone a turtle coroner to remove them and they were just swimming away in their gross murky water. So not dead. This is why I’m not a coroner myself. I confuse sleeping with dead. Actually it’s just one reason.
I slept and was choked. I am not dead but I woke dead in my dreams. I didn’t want to fall asleep last night from fear of being chased in my sleep again and eventually my body said it had to sleep from all the people in a maze at school navigating. Then I woke choked. My airway felt closed up when I swallowed and tried to breath. I lied awake after this until morning. Researching mice.
I am trying to just embrace this sleep nightmare mess. It means something. I should be researched at night so someone can say why. I need someone to watch me sleep or help me sleep or just make sure I’m not dead from my sleep when I wake from my dying in my sleep. I need someone to remove dead animals but I need someone to make sure they aren’t dead apparently first. I need someone someday. Today actually.
That’s what the pyramid foundation was being made for. So I can build on top of it and add things that are on top of something solid, stable and secure. I’m finally safe and can keep building it. I don’t want it to be a pyramid in my head but once it’s in my head it’s in my head. Now I’m making a pyramid in life. How did they even do that then? Make pyramids? It seems impossible. Do we still make them? Are we still making pyramids in Egypt? I’m sure I will know when I wake from my Im dead in my sleep and to afraid to fall back to dead sleep. If I could go back in time it would be to be in Egypt and be on a crew who helped build pyramids just so I could see a pyramid being actually built so I know it really happened.
I am looking at the baby turtles now and they still look dead. They haven’t moved in about 20 minutes. When I first started watching them. Not a single movement. Not even when I move the tank. They are that alive. Not dead. Just sleeping. Dreaming turtle dreams.
I feel inadequate. Like I’ve failed and am not enough again. Back to not enough. I can’t be more. I can’t be there for anyone no more than they can be to remove turtles for me. I have to remove dead turtles for me myself. I have to check for turtle life myself. I missed my daughters thyroid function problems. I’ve been blaming her symptoms in my head on grief. She is eating more, sleeping less, gaining weight, erratic periods. But it is likely her thyroid. As it once was. Everything is about grief to me right now. Everything is dead or almost dead to me. Everything feels like it could end in a second.
I’m not enough for someone else because I’m still not enough for me? I’m not there yet? I’m close but not? Is that a thing? When I feel like enough for me then I will for someone else? Or they will be enough because I don’t need them for anything? So why are they there? For what? Are we just never enough and that’s why we need people? But we still struggle with not enough? Or is that me?
How do you be more? For a person? You don’t? You just do what we do and they do what they do and you never try? If no one ever tried no one would ever be together? Not everyone is listening to the universe and making no decisions and just letting the universe make them for them? Even though thé universe isn’t making them for them they are just made and they just do? What if we all got it? We all believed one solid thing and one single thing and it was true? What if there was perfect balance and rhythm to the universe because the universe was in control? It is? We fight it? We try to hard when we log on to shop for new people when the people we have aren’t enough and we can’t say so? We fight it when we try to find something better? Is that what he did? Looked for something better? Than me? Who is better than me? Today it seems everyone that is online and looking for someone is? Because they look so tempting online. They are fighting a universe in control. We are all sniffing around corners and trying to navigate in a maze. Like the mice. We are trying to decide left or right? We are all just trying? Are we trying or deciding anything? This won’t ever get resolved for me. I’m trying to ask questions with no answers. I’m making more as I go so I have more unanswered questions. Because there are too many and really just one. Who is in control?
Aspenleaf 