Pixie in Paradise

Here’s how five straight days of rain turned into a self-regulated therapy session or as I like to call it: too much time to think!

About eighteen years ago I was living in Madison, Wisconsin with my ex husband and our four adopted chihuahuas. Adopted is implied, I didn’t pop those out myself. We actually rescued each of the little creatures from various animal welfare organizations or in the case of my favorite – the gingery sweet naive redheaded one – from word of mouth. I had way more free time on my hands back then because I usually worked three hospital shifts and was off the rest of the time to spend with the “kids,” my ex, or running around and basically doing whatever I wanted. Not much has changed, my time is largely my own, except when I’m not globetrotting and am back stateside, there’s only one man I have to answer to now: Pesto, the three-legged cat. He’s the only man left standing since the other fur kids have passed away.

Back then I immersed myself in pet parenthood and all things dog, this was way before Pesto came onto the scene and I realized that cats are awesome. I already knew this because it was the only pet I had as a child as we weren’t allowed to have indoor domestic pets per Farmer Ron, my dad. Stray mama cats would have their kittens in our dairy barn and I would sit for hours trying to tame these feral hissing furballs. So it sort of made sense that as an adult I went way overboard with the amount of mammals I allowed to live side by side with in the house.

I even spent time doing animal transport for the types of rescue organizations we adopted our dogs from. This meant taking a dog from a foster home to bring them to a different foster home, rescue organization or even their new adoptive home. About 20 years ago I was doing one of those transports, dropping off a dog to a woman I had met in a coffee shop a few days prior. I don’t exactly remember the circumstances, either I found a dog or a friend of mine had found a dog or was re-homing one, and this woman overheard me tell someone about this sweet homeless dog that needed a loving family and she agreed to take him. After I arrived at her beautiful suburban house, somewhere in the conversation she informed me that she could tell I was a “highly sensitive person.” I don’t recall what made her say that as I was merely there to drop off her newly adopted dog that I had volunteered to deliver. I think she was actually some type of psychologist or therapist and I didn’t think much of her impromptu diagnosis at the time.

But the real mystery is, why after five solid days and nights of rain whilst living on an island in Central America did I ever think of that? Here’s what I think happened.

Until recently I’ve lived my entire life in the US and even when I lived in a rural environment I still owned a car. Freedom to “move about the cabin” that is my life, so to speak, has never evaded me but there is something about living on a tiny island five miles long of which only two of those are livable to me logistically (I can get to the other side easily in GOOD weather). There are no cars, which I love, only golf carts used for taxis and bicycles. I have a bicycle which is amazing and I adore the basket on the front of my blue and black bike that Rasta got for me. Since he’s also the bicycle fix-it man on the island and I no fuck all about them, I have him wash and tune it up for me. If I run into something with it I hand it to him and say “Here, see if anything’s messed up.” (I’m truly not great on bikes – I was similarly piss poor on my Yamaha Virago motorcycle, owned all of four weeks).

I live at the far south end of my island and all food is at least half a mile away, that’s where the first grocery store is located. The furthest is near that two-mile mark. This means that in order to pick up a modest amount of food for three to seven days, I need to take the bike in order to put the excess groceries in its basket. I can ride with a decent amount in a backpack then the surplus has to go in the front. Every few days the sight you’ll see is me struggling to pedal with glass bottles, cans and veggies in the backpack, trying to not squash a lighter item under the heavier ones. Bread always arrives home looking super janky (like a ten-year old memory foam mattress on the side of the road). Do I even need to describe the shitshow that is me being handed eggs sitting in a plastic bag and trying to get those home without breaking? To my credit it’s only been an issue twice and we are two for two, no shells cracked. It’s not a water-into-wine level miracle, but it still takes some talent.

The point is, with six inches of rain covering the driveway and dirt street in front of my apartment and torrential rain still coming down 23 out of 24 hours every day, ain’t nobody goin’ nowhere. Most of us were stranded.

And the combination of no contact with anyone except through text messages (Rasta stays at his house occasionally when he works day shifts), no tidy way to leave the house dry or safe, all I could do is stay at home and sit in the hammock on the balcony and watch the downpour. If the wind was blowing rain toward the building then I was stuck indoors. Indoors, no human contact and the most deafeningly loud rain hitting the roof. It was so loud I couldn’t even hear to make a phone call or watch a movie on my laptop. So we sit still, but the wheels in the mind keep turning. And I thought about the noise, the rain, how much I usually enjoy rain – especially rain in a warm climate – the lack of human interaction, the lack of ability to go get food or necessities without a huge hassle and I started to get twitchy. “Twitchy” is the word I use to describe the hours or moments leading up to a “moment.” Moment, being a tiny little blip in time when I am not at my best: tired, hungry, angry, “hangry”, or all-around emotional about something that’s probably not as big of a something as I am about to make it. 

I turned into Tom Hanks in Castaway for the first three days but then it started to feel like I was living seasons 13 through 16 of Deadliest Catch. I really think a lot of it had to do with the sensory overload, the intense noise of the rain. It was truly louder than even our monsoon season in Arizona. Well, the noise levels are similar but the monsoon rains stop and start much more often usually, giving us a break. And the minute the rain would stop, all six kids in my little neighborhood would run outside and scream because they needed to burn energy. I have to commend them: these grade-school aged children aren’t stuck inside on electronics. They still run around and play outside with each other and find joy and entertainment in the things that I remember my brother and I doing when we were kids. We’d run around on the farm in our own world or find interesting rocks and sticks or ride bicycles but the noise level of the few kids living around me is really insane. Not just while these rains have gone on. My neighbors always have very loud children and they are all boys between the ages of two months and 14 years, but I’m noticing it more now because I can’t leave to go to the cafe or beach or ride my bike or take a walk. 

I am stranded in my second-story (thank goodness up that high) apartment wondering if we will get washed away or if the cyclones will actually hit us that we are all so closely tracking. Will we lose power which means losing connection with the outside world? We would never hear any warnings to evacuate. And, I never bought that portable life jacket right before moving here that I thought might be a good idea. Then I thought, geez, that’s really being over prepared – which I really was in most ways. Why not relax a bit and let the universe take care of you? If Jesus wants you to float, you’ll float. If not, you won’t. So I didn’t order it. What a stupid delineation to draw. The life jacket. That’s what I thought was too much, not the high-end skin care products, or the stovetop coffee maker, hidden camera detector, two hunting knives, waterproof matches or animal print platform sandals?! I drew the line at the life jacket when moving to an island. 

How can someone so highly intelligent just throw these random absolutely stupid moments into the mix? And almost always for something that I know better than doing. It’s like I meet with the executive producer of the TV show that is my life and they go, “Now do something really really dumb just to see if you make it through that.”

“Highly sensitive people (HSPs) are typically highly intelligent, and seek out opportunities to do deep work. Many HSPs are academics, artists, researchers, scientists and technicians with high level proficiency”. What triggers an HSP? Overstimulation. That seems obvious. HSPs can be overwhelmed more easily by sights, sounds and even textures, causing distress or anxiety. For example, HSPs can become overwhelmed when their environment is too noisy, bright or cold, and they can become stressed by large groups of people, lots of talking, chaos and clutter. I am about to spend five days on mainland Belize to do some sightseeing and I have a feeling we will be revisiting the HSP theory.

To answer your question, Yes. I am more than likely an HSP. I’ve known since before that woman diagnosed me during a conversation about dogs. It only affects my life to the extent that I let it and sometimes I don’t have a handle on it. Most everything I have done in life has been done regardless of the fact that I’m a little twitchy once in a while and while I don’t answer Yes to all of the questions in the HSP survey, we are certainly up there somewhere between 70 and 80% I think. Again, not an official diagnosis and nobody needs one, I just answered the questions and that’s the way the cookie crumbled.  I’m good at hiding it when I want to but for the people that I’m closest to, I don’t even try. They know if we’re seated near children at a restaurant I will make the hostess move us, if someone is rattling candy wrappers or using their cell phone in a movie theater I will march right down and tell them to quit. They know I am only comfortable between 76 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit and I can’t stand loud noises, sounds or lights. But I’m a pretty freaking good time and wickedly funny. And I’m extremely empathic. I can feel someone else’s energy the minute they step into a room, without them having to speak. I enjoy being around people for short periods of time then have to recharge at home or somewhere preferably with a pettable animal. My dogs and beautiful cat were all non-licensed emotional support animals and never even knew it. 

Being around animals my whole life was probably one of the best coping mechanisms for offloading stressful days or moments. They are incredibly comforting which is why therapy animals are doing such good work. My southwestie bestie (one of my ride or die girlfriends in Arizona) not only has two trained therapy dogs but she even has a miniature horse named Stetson who is also a certified therapy animal! As I type this I can hear my neighbor’s television blaring beneath me and true to form it is making me feel twitchy. I’d love it if Stetson were up here with me right now, not just so I could love on him but so that he could stomp on her ceiling, which is my living room floor. 

So as the rain and storms continued, with each day I said goodbye to a little more sanity, I constantly looked out the window to see how deep the water was getting and for signs that it would let up. That kind of rain is exciting for sure, but there is a point where it got worrisome and as I said it also got lonesome. On day five I looked out my front door and across the flooded driveway from me there was an adorable white bird. He was standing in a deep puddle that extended the length of the little orange house on stilts that he was under. He stood still and to be honest, he looked lost. I had never seen that type of bird except for on the beach. I very soon became worried that it was a young bird and didn’t know any better and took a wrong turn down my street. Instead of heading south toward the airport and the beach, he headed a little further north and ended up at the high school. This made me realize I very much have some of my mother’s sweet compassion. This is a woman who calls baby quail, “little walnuts.” When a quail laid eggs in one of her plants, my mom was on little walnut watch for days until they all made it safely out of her geranium pot, and would call to update me on their status frequently.
I took a photo of my little white bird at 6am and another one at 4pm as he had been hanging out all day. At least in the afternoon he started pecking around in the water and I hoped that meant he was eating. I think this bird is either a white ibis or a young great egret, both common waterfowl in Belize. This white bird for me sort of symbolized the soccer ball in Castaway. Tom Hanks’ character names his soccer ball Wilson, and proceeds to have conversations with it, as it is his only company. While I was nowhere near that desperate and never named the bird, this was the imagery that kept popping up as the rain continued. The whole island stood still and my white bird sheltered under a wooden house, looking as twitchy as I did.