I'm trying...

But not really succeeding. I haven't been sleeping well, the last couple nights, which makes my moods more difficult to deal with, and today the viciousness of the world just washed all over me. 

So I simply don't want to do anything. And that's a sign of depression, isn't it? Or is it just that I'm too much of an empath and the cruelty of people is finally cutting past my defenses?

I looked up what an empath is, to make sure I understood it right, and it's a person highly attuned to the emotions of others, often experiencing them as intensely as their own. Meaning not only can they understand the emotions of those around them but also physically feel them, absorb them, take them on and feel them like they're their own.

What made me think this was seeing clips from the battlefield of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Russia sends her men out to be slaughtered in a meat-grinder of death, some of them not even physically capable. That's awful, but what mitigated the evil of that in my mind was knowing about some of the horrors Russian soldiers have inflicted on the people of Ukraine. Evil, evil things. Inhuman.

Ukraine's fighting back in ways far more technologically advanced, using swarms of drones to kill the advancing forces. And this one clip showed soldier after soldier being tracked down by a drone...and running and trying to hide and waving off the drone and doing everything they can to keep them away...until it blows them to bits. Over and over and over.

I could feel those men's terror and desperation through the videos. Men who may have done unspeakable acts to civilians in Ukraine...yet I hurt at seeing them die. It's so cold and uncaring...even though it's probably the only way they'll be able to keep Russia from overrunning Ukraine and doing even more horrible things to her people. Like they have in the past. But I can't reconcile the horror of what I'm seeing with the need for it.

There's also the bill the House just passed, cutting Medicaid, SNAP, environmental protections and so much more. Which will cause untold suffering and death in America, and the MAGAt Class cheers while Democrats dither and lecture and whine. It's like we're trapped in a runaway train with no brakes and the end of the track in sight.

So PvSH is sitting there waiting for me to get back to it...and I just can't. I just can't.