Fini, thank you so much for your response. And no, I don't think at all you're projecting your own stuff. More like a simple reflection of your own experience to mine - or the other way around.
Your comments on 'suffering' as I described it - and which you pinged - give me a bit to think about. Just off the top though, I'm not sure I'm 'detached' from all the things you repeated back to me. No, I think (guess) it's that those ways of describing suffering were - and often ARE - simply how it feels. Deeply.
Yet, not always. For example, today - even though drinking again - I got right into the experience of simply dusting and vacuuming (prior to the rental inspection), sweeping up outside, then messing about with the whipper snipper (mine's a big old bas*&d from my work 20+ years ago in the bush, and still going - mixing its oil / fuel (had to ask the young guy next door how to calibrate the mix ratio - now THAT'S just ageing, I believe :-)), whispering the damn thing to prime and pull, pull, pull to start...etc. Then sweepin' around with it blasting smoke and noise - but blessedly only briefly, given my current 'lawn' is about a few feet square - easy!.
Then ditto with the lawn mower....whispering its fuel priming, blah blah, fiddling with the choke ....then hearing it kick into life. This ridiculously small front lawn takes about 5 minutes to edge and mow, with a good half hour to gentle the machines into action!
Then the sweeping up. I try to do a kind of 'chop wood, carry water' thing when I'm sweeping outside. Some ancient memory from when I was a kid, doing huge amounts of driveway sweeping etc - a blessed relief in myself out in the garden, away from my violent alcoholic father and my terse, fraught, disappointed mother.
Now THEY suffered. Both long dead now. And no, of course, I can't change any of that for them now. I've also forgiven them - so that's some small relief.
Meantime, right now, I have an incredibly clean, tidy home, inside and out. A couple of lamb loin chops to pan fry or grill with some veg. Haven't eaten all day, so am looking forward to a good dinner. And the radio on with ABC Classic FM Drive (music to soothe commuters stuck in traffic all over Australia, mostly). I get to hear all manner of things on this programme. And the presenter, a lovely woman with a mellifluous voice, I'm sure soothes and calms many on their way home from the grind - as well as those of us (retirees, the sick, the disabled, home-workers, etc) who simply need the community of radio music and voice.