Before I related our loss of Rhianna, I mentioned how I had spent a couple days feeling really good and energetic. It’s a shame it was so short-lived but it seems events conspired against me after that.

We woke on Saturday to the news frenzy surrounding the Paris attacks, The event itself is horrific enough, not to mention over attacks in various parts of the world in the days around it. But then there was the aftermath of people lacking compassion for fellow human beings and being selfish. I sadly must say there are members of my family and friends who fall into this category and it left me very much in despair to know they felt like they did. I ended up in a seething rage for a couple of days. Part of me wanted to carry on but it is an exhausting and painful experience so I decided I had to close it down because I couldn’t sustain those feelings for long.

I didn’t have a plan on how to do this so my mission was to find a way to calm that feeling of rage. I did this by listening to music, disengaging from certain social media websites and doing some breathing exercises and relaxation. It was not necessarily in this order. I think the breathing was the first thing I did because I was feeling pretty stressed out by everything. The other things followed in various ways. I told myself I need to allow my eyes to glaze over and feel nothing when I read something that starts me feeling angry again. For the most part, it worked. I have stayed pretty calm over the past few days. I think my biggest mistake was engaging in discussion online with certain family members that stirred me up to raging feelings. I know better than to go there but I did. I just felt I couldn’t sit idly on the sidelines without making a comment regarding the truth in something posted. It was a mistake and hopefully I won’t go there again.

The whole thing has added to my resolve not to discuss politics or certain current events with certain members of my family. Sadly no good will come of it because we are so opposite in the ways we think about our place in the world. I will admit to feeling a bit of anger at times but I have managed to stay calm instead of losing the plot. Anyway, that has left me with a sadness because I realised I have such different values to so many people in my life. I have maintained some distance from family over the past several days but I will engage with people for Thanksgiving in some way. It’s a bit sooner than I’d have liked but I just have to rise above these feelings and make it work. After all, I at least do have the luxury of having these emotions and dealing with them in the best way I can.

I have many friends who think much more like I do and I take comfort that most of them still think the same way they did years ago when I first knew them. They don’t allow fear to rule them like some people in my family do.

Last Monday also was the birthday of my friend who died of cancer 3.5 years ago, which already made me feel a bit sad.

In addition to the emotional stuff, I also had essentially a toothache due to food continuing to get stuck under my one lower molar. It would become inflamed every time I ate and it was impossible to floss out the stuff that was stuck. I went back to the dentist last week and he replaced a filling on an adjacent tooth then did some work on a couple other things to try to solve the problem. He did an x-ray that showed it all looked quite good so was puzzled as to why it was causing me so much problems. Anyway, it seems the work he did has helped because I haven’t had any more issues since then,

For now, I will hope for some return of that lovely feeling of being really alive and happy and energetic at some point. And I will also hope for some inkling of what set that off because I would like it to happen more often.