I cannot fathom how someone can live a life this way or how they get there and continue to exist without dying of laziness. How can you care so little and still have animals to take care of much less yourself. It is incomprehensible to me.
Trauma, lack of self care, delusions, anxiety, demotivation, abuse, exhaustion, medical issues, serious mental health issues, etc.
Same with hoarding. Same with anger issues/road rage, same with wife beaters, same with con artists, same with murders.
These all interrelate to each other (often reinforcing or contributing to starting new ones too!) and while most functioning people are able to identify the factors causing dysregulation into a non-functioning or pathologically functioning state and address them before they become a real problem, anyone can end up there with the right set of stimuli and circumstances.
For some it requires truly exceptional inputs (to the point it’s nigh impossible - see James Bond Stockdale) for others it comes naturally due to a very unlucky set of genetic factors or how they were raised (or both).
If you decide to choose pity, avoidance, anger, retribution, or something else (understanding and self-regulation in a way that helps you?) is up to you.
Sometimes there is no ‘good’ response, which is why the legal system exists the way it does, right of self defense exists in most places, property rights exist in the way they do in most places to contain/conpartmentalize things, etc.
they’ll come home when they’re hungry, as long as they don’t bother livestock people don’t tend to care much
Now that I'm dealing with "long COVID" in a big, big way… I thought the same as you, and wondered if it wasn't something like that going on.
Priorities have shifted, for sure. Having come >< close to death, the things you used to think were super important just don't seem to matter as much in the grand scheme of things.