May 1. Another anniversary. Three years ago, my boy left. He was my cat, my best friend, my only love. Hooks. We had seven wonderful years together, and the three since he left seem like a dark, empty eternity. I’m changed, stagnant and uncaring. The world is a different place, a banal predictable circus overrun by human monkeys. Where is decency? Where is compassion, where is consideration in this violent atmosphere? Where is the respect we all want ,yet refuse to give, as we shake our heads in disbelief at our neighbors inability to see beyond themselves to accomodate us, as we fail to do to them? I’m told I’m “redefining” myself, in this new world without the only soul I ever loved. I see a world that is changed, if only in my perspective…that it was held together by the loving bond of our two souls. “The love remains”…”He’s still with you”…”You’ll see him again”…”Focus on the love”. Advice from the well intentioned. It was his beating heart, his breathing lungs, his warm, soft fur, his graceful eyes that defined me.
I am changing. My tenuous grasp on a higher power has eroded into anger and scorn. Not so much because an imagined power took away my boy…but because I, we, are all here, eating daily doses of shit with no end in sight. Why? Fuck accepting the unexplainable mystery of our existence…fuck blind faith…I fucking want answers, and know there are none. And, in their absence, I feel entitled to curse this worlds reason. It may be mandatory to endure this life until death relieves me of it’s curse, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to swear my allegiance to it’s creator, whether it be deity or not, and grovel at it’s pathetic feet. If this world, if the nature of our existence is any indication of the capability of it’s designer, well…chuckle. Let’s just say it needs refinement. I once saw a universe of wonder, and was inspired to awe … now I see nothing more than a laboratory for creative powers, laws of physics, in which various life forms are being “tried on for size”, guided through an evolutionary process for …what? For freaking what?
Take me. I’m ready, you son of a *****. I live day to day now, as I “redefine” myself, searching for a love as powerful, true and strong as Hooks. Take me, I officially volunteer. I am committed to another cat, the mother of my little boy…I had a chance to end my life last March, but couldn’t…his mama needs me to care for her, and she deserves it, so here I am, stumbling and bumbling through your chaos, disillusioned and tired, a stranger in a foreign land which was once a burgeoning paradise of love and life. I’ll adjust…I have no choice. I already am. Thing is…breaking the connection to the power of the memories that I crave to restore but know cant be restored…is terrifying. To leave this location, to make the changes necessary to deal with this pain…cripple me with fright. This apartment was his home for seven years, our home for seven years, he was born here, he lived every single day, ate every single meal, slept every single night, here, in this home…and now, three years later, I still cringe at the emptiness of this tomb. He is gone, and now…it is only a cold sepulcher housing the shell of it’s previous tenant. Here, there is no sun, only a grey, hazy luminescence…
Sigh. The fog will burn off. Someday. Someday. I will awake again, and find a new version of myself, or I won’t. My daily prayer is for death, and it’s sincere. I’ll get my wish, or I won’t. I’ll summon the courage to take my life when my obligation to the mother of my beloved son is complete, or I won’t. There is no clear answer. There are only the remnants of a man who once loved so strongly that he existed in a world of beauty and hope, who misses a cat that was his life and love, his heart and soul, his world.
Here’s to you, my little love, my handsome perfect, my boogie, my taco, heres to you Hooks. I love you. I miss you. One day, one day. We’ll either be reunited as pure energy, and bask in fiery love free from the limits of earth bound existence, or not. Either way. I’ll take the icy cold eternally dark blackness of death to be in the same place as you, kid. God I miss you…thanks for being my reason for seven years. I love you.
2 comments
He looks terribly sweet. He was lucky to have you. I can’t tell you life gets better one day. But I can tell you there are a lot of cats in the world that would benefit from your love should you decide to take a few others in, or foster them for a while.
There are 2 events that will change you forever, one is when you truly face death, and the other is when you face the death of someone you are responsible for protecting (a child, a pet). You’ve gone through both in the worst way.
I figure there are 2 ways you can change, one is to become cynical and the other is to become delusional. Well I suppose there’s a 3rd option to become completely numb, but maybe that’s just another form of cynical.
Delusional is better, by all accounts. Even though it’s paper thin, I can’t help but admire the people who turn tragedy into a call to arms. Whether it’s diving into faith & spirituality, or some renewed sense of purpose in some other lost cause, you can’t deny that those people are way happier than us cynics. But we don’t get to choose how we react emotionally. I guess we can fake it but that’s not the same as believing it.
I dunno friend. The whole thing seems so… predestined. And that pisses me off. We suffer tragedy and then we slowly drown in negativity and apathy. It’s like radiation sickness or something, you get exposed and all that’s left is to watch your hair fall out and your skin rot and your organs shut down one by one, what’s the point.
On the subject of gods, have you ever looked into a philosophy called “deism”? It’s a pretty broad term but one facet is that a deist believes that there is/was a creator, but that creator is/was imperfect. Or possibly died off long ago. In other words, god created this world, possibly with good intentions, but made some mistakes or maybe lost control of it.
When I find myself wanting to curse the heavens for this fked up slimepot of a world, I try to remind myself of that possibility. Maybe a creator did the best job possible but, like any of us, simply failed.