I'm dissociating pretty badly rn, TW animal death (wild, not a pet), graphic description of it, TW dissociation and mental health, etc
I went to clean my snake's tank earlier (he's fine, this doesn't concern him), took all his stuff outside to wash, left it to dry in the sun, and since I had been using the hose, I decided to water the yard. I finish that and catch my mom as she comes to the back yard. I ask her where the ready-compost pots went, because I wanted to make sure the compost got used, or were ready to be used, rather than just dumped somewhere. She confirms some were used, and she moved the rest of the unused compost pots out of the way. On the subject of pots, I noticed the collection of empty/unused garden pots got moved around since I last saw them in spring. I ask her to go over there (with me) because it looked like she stacked them wrong.
Back in spring when I went to get a few pots, I lifted one and found a trapped alligator lizard, and I had to remind my mom that both the watering can and ALL the empty pots need to be stored bottom-up, so lizards don't get trapped like that, because I have found so many weak lizards trapped in the pots and watering can. I was very emphatic that she do this because I care a lot about reptiles and I don't want to find a lizard in that condition again.
Today, when I brought her over, she said the pots were fine. I pointed specifically to one that was full of dirt still, but was stacked/nested inside an empty bigger one with a small edge space big enough for baby lizards. I turned over multiple other empty pots to show her what to do (again). Then I went to grab the heavy dirt-filled pot out, so I could flip the bigger pot around it upside down.
As soon as I get the heavy dirt pot out, I look in the bigger pot. And it's skeletons. Two poor fence lizard skeletons. Juvenile, small. I start yelling at my mom and pointing it out that this is something I don't ever want to see, that this is the reason why the pots have to be upside down. And she refuses to admit to stacking the pots like that, even though I haven't been gardening lately, or moving those pots, since back in spring when I flipped them all the correct way and reminded her about this (that's when I found the alligator lizard). Wire Mother bullshit.
I'm seriously having trouble typing this, it was so distressing, and she was annoyed at me for taking up her time.
I can't stop thinking about how gruesome of a death that would be for them, trapped in a half inch gap and left to dehydrate and starve to death as bugs eat their emaciated bodies. All because my mom does not care about the well-being of reptiles enough to take two seconds to flip the empty pot upside down.
I know most people don't care about reptiles.
Imagine if the neighbor's dog came into our yard, got his collar stuck on a hanger we left on the laundry line, and then we happen upon a strangled dog corpse. Like. That's horrifying. I would never again in my life leave an unattended hanger on the laundry line after that, you know?
That's how I feel seeing those lizards. I love these lizards. I called one by its Chumash name " ’onokok’ " earlier today since I just re-learned that. In Chumash legend, human hands are modeled after lizard hands. Reptiles are cute and precious to me. I lizard-watch whenever I'm outside. So, after years of occasionally finding weakened and scared lizards trapped in empty plant pots (because that's where bugs and spiders make a home), or in a watering can left upright instead of on its side (because that's where there is water on a hot day, and they can't escape when it's upright) I have been vigilant. I have warned my family so many times, because it sickens me to even find them alive and in a weakened state due to our human tools/items being left out. I have cried for the surviving lizards before, just because the very idea that one could have died due to any of our actions was distressing enough.
So seeing those skeletons covered in bugs today just fucking broke me.
I crawled out of bed to take migraine meds, nausea meds, and fuck it, anxiety meds. Because something was really wrong and I couldn't tell if it was something I could safely dismiss as psychological. I waited a little bit for them to kick in. Then went to the bathroom to take out my teeth aligners so I could try to eat to help quell the residual nausea. I didn't even recognize myself in the mirror. I still look like I'm wearing someone else's face. It's not my face, I look like someone else. I look normal at a distance, but the closer I walk up to the bathroom sink, my features are all elongated and warped and I have no expression at all. When I went downstairs, even my dog looked at me like he didn't recognize me, because all of what makes me 'me' has been drained out of my body.
I had to get in bed to have a humongous screaming and crying mental breakdown, or else that anger was going to get turned outward.
Then suddenly, it stopped. Like a switch just turned off, that fast.
I have been feeling maybe-migraine-y all day, and in that moment it just hit me really hard that I was definitely having a migraine on top of all this. I was eerily calm. My vision was swirling and pulsing with waves of something... neurological, idk. I was seeing, but with the same clarity of clouded sight like in a dream. Everything was slow. I was having all kinds of nasty thoughts. I felt like I was going to puke. I thought I was dying.
Obviously, it's dissociation. I know that.
But I still feel really sick.
I tried doing Mindfulness type focus on my food. I put on an aquarium livestream. I read through all my flashcards and focused a lot on how each sound was made for all the words. I still don't feel grounded. I am still stuck in this iron maiden of a body running on autopilot. It doesn't feel real. I have never dissociated this badly in my life and I don't know what to do. The swirling migraine vision mostly stopped at least, thanks to the meds (I can still feel a hint of it, but I can't see it).
Typing this out feels like sending morse code from another dimension.
I'm not asking for anything, I don't need any comments, I just really needed to get this off my chest and type it all out, because it was too hard to journal it on paper (physically to write this much, and emotionally - I'm sure even this post is coming across as clinical and flat in verbiage, because if I think too hard about what happened, I can feel the pressure cooker lid-release creak open a blast of the fit from earlier).
I need to find some other activity to do until the dissociation wears off. Might even have to go to bed early later and let my body hard reset if this doesn't get better.
I can hear the blast of inner self hitting the flat wall of my affect, like a reverse car wash.
amandla
stormborns
origamiaround
yousharknotpass
tangentwithtanner
gamechangershow
