Little Lost, Trying to be found

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This is Jack. Jack was not someone I had planned for but I love this little bundle of joy with all my heart, and he’s kind of obsessed with me so now we’re a package deal. I’m not posting to gloat about my incredibly handsome, super funny, snuggle bug, but I want to share some things that made this wonderful cat unadoptable in the eyes of most people.

Firstly, black cats are the least likely to be adopted due to some ridiculous, superstitious mumbo jumbo that still sticks around in people. Personally I think black is awesome and I’m planning on putting batwings on him at Halloween because it’ll be freaking fantastic. But the biggest reason he is unlikely to be adopted is because animals with special needs are highly unlikely to be adopted. Jack may look just fine right now but he is feline leukaemia positive. It’s an incurable virus that makes him highly susceptible to illness and means he will have a short little lifespan. I have seen this disease in action too many times so I know exactly how it goes; he’s going to be fine and dandy right up until the day that he isn’t and then he will get very sick and be gone quickly. My heart is already breaking just thinking about it, but HE doesn’t know that is life will be short. HE doesn’t know he’s going to get sick and leave this world faster than either of us would like. Nope, that information my burden and my heartache, and i can’t run away from it and put him back into a shelter where I know he’ll spend his life wondering where his cuddle partner went. He just knows that at 7 am everyday (even weekends) he likes to stick his face in my face to wake me up. He know he likes to watch Kitty TV on the window sill and chill with his buddies, the neighborhood outdoor cats who come visit him. And he knows that he can cuddle up on my lap or my shoulders anytime he damn well pleases. So Jack and I are gonna have a good run together. We’ll have lots of cuddles, lots of laughs, and we’ll enjoy the time we have while we have it. It’s gonna hurt like a bitch, everything does these days so I’ll take this too.

This is what I want to say to others out there; if you can find it in you heart to give an animal a chance who may otherwise be over looked. DO IT. It’s worth it. These little souls deserve the chance to have a home. The older ones, the special needs ones, the funny looking ones. The little bastards that spray their food and litter all over the place. They need you more than a perfect little kitten or puppy ever would. Please please please give them a chance.

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My darling Jack. My cuddle bug. We only got 10 months together, I wish it was a so much longer but I am so grateful that I got to know your beautiful little soul in the short time that you had. I loved every single minute with you. Rest in peace my sweet prince. Mummy loves you Jackie boy ❤️

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Dear Pops,

Your garden was beautiful this summer. Mum and I are doing well. The animals are all doing great, I accidentally adopted a new one; his name is Jack, he is so sweet and he really needed me. You would absolutely love him.

We miss you so much. We talk about you all the time. We laugh a lot ... and we cry, but we are okay because we have each other and so many beautiful memories.

I spent the weekend making art in your workshop. I can’t do what you could do but I’m trying something and it’s pretty nifty. I think you’d like it.

Mum and I were looking at the blue moon last night and arguing about whether something was Mars or an plane (it was totally a plane) and we saw a iridium flare! It was beautiful!

It feels impossible that you have been gone for a year. I swear I can see you out of the corner of my eye every day. I am alway looking for you.

We love you. We miss you. We wish you were here.

[workinprogress66]

This is Jack. Jack was not someone I had planned for but I love this little bundle of joy with all my heart, and he’s kind of obsessed with me so now we’re a package deal. I’m not posting to gloat about my incredibly handsome, super funny, snuggle bug, but I want to share some things that made this wonderful cat unadoptable in the eyes of most people.

Firstly, black cats are the least likely to be adopted due to some ridiculous, superstitious mumbo jumbo that still sticks around in people. Personally I think black is awesome and I’m planning on putting batwings on him at Halloween because it’ll be freaking fantastic. But the biggest reason he is unlikely to be adopted is because animals with special needs are highly unlikely to be adopted. Jack may look just fine right now but he is feline leukaemia positive. It’s an incurable virus that makes him highly susceptible to illness and means he will have a short little lifespan. I have seen this disease in action too many times so I know exactly how it goes; he’s going to be fine and dandy right up until the day that he isn’t and then he will get very sick and be gone quickly. My heart is already breaking just thinking about it, but HE doesn’t know that is life will be short. HE doesn’t know he’s going to get sick and leave this world faster than either of us would like. Nope, that information my burden and my heartache, and i can’t run away from it and put him back into a shelter where I know he’ll spend his life wondering where his cuddle partner went. He just knows that at 7 am everyday (even weekends) he likes to stick his face in my face to wake me up. He know he likes to watch Kitty TV on the window sill and chill with his buddies, the neighborhood outdoor cats who come visit him. And he knows that he can cuddle up on my lap or my shoulders anytime he damn well pleases. So Jack and I are gonna have a good run together. We’ll have lots of cuddles, lots of laughs, and we’ll enjoy the time we have while we have it. It’s gonna hurt like a bitch, everything does these days so I’ll take this too.

This is what I want to say to others out there; if you can find it in you heart to give an animal a chance who may otherwise be over looked. DO IT. It’s worth it. These little souls deserve the chance to have a home. The older ones, the special needs ones, the funny looking ones. The little bastards that spray their food and litter all over the place. They need you more than a perfect little kitten or puppy ever would. Please please please give them a chance.

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My dad was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkins lymphoma in December 2019. He started chemo treatments in January 2020 when there were rumblings about this Corona virus thing. I was visiting my parents every weekend without fail, usually spending at least one night. I was hugging him when he was sad or tired or frustrated. I was being there for him and my mum like they had always been there for me. I was being a good daughter.

And then March 2020 happened. I left my parents house after spending my birthday weekend with them. I hugged them goodbye and thanked them for everything. By the next morning the world shut down. I went to work and they told me to pack up my computer, get in a cab and go home. Politicians were saying to stay in our homes, see no one, go out only for essentials. And that anyone with a compromised immune system was extremely susceptible to this virus. Dad needed to be protected at all cost.

If I had known that weekend in March would be the last time I could hug them without being afraid that it could kill them, I would have held on so much longer.

So I complied. I stayed home and away from everyone, everything, even my parents. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do to. COVID stole precious, irreplaceable months from my dad and I. It stole time I should have spent by his side. It stole hugs. It stole laughter. It stole joy. It stole hope. It stole EVERYTHING we fucking needed in the worst, most desperate time of our lives. Something I can never have back or do over or make right. It robbed me of being the daughter I wanted to be for my father. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that rage.

Eventually I had visits where I came to the back yard through the gate and treated everything I touched like it was a biohazard that could kill my parents. I freaked out when either of them came within ten feet of me. This went on for months. Then finally wrapping myself in plastic-wrap so that I could finally hug them. I cried in my car as I drove away every time I left their house worried that I had accidentally fucked up and may be transmitted the virus to them.

And in the end the virus didn’t get him. All my precautions and sacrifices and heartache didn’t make one inch of difference. The cancer got him. And my mother and i had to make a guest list for his funeral. How do you make a fucking guest like that? For a man who could have filled a small stadium with the lives that he touched?

Fuck COVID and the things it stole from me. Fuck COVID and the pain and misery is caused my dad in the last months of his life. Fuck COVID for stealing my last chance to be a good daughter to him. For taking away my last chance to show him how much I loved him when he needed me the most.

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Sadly the new apartment is not going to be home *sigh* It is in fact going to be a place where I keep only SOME OF MY STUFF. This place is so not home that I’m not bothering to bring the majority of my things. I’m not bothering to bring most of my clothes, my books, or my wall art. I haven’t even brought my cats, but the is a whole other story. I just got myself have a very expensive place to sleep and feel uncomfortable. Fuck. My. Life.

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I’m moving tomorrow...again...third time in six months. New town. Basement apartment. Completely new territory for me and I’m worried as hell. I don’t think it’s going to be a home, just like the last few places. It’ll just be that place where I keep my stuff. I hope I’m wrong. I need to find my home again.

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I got sucker punched tonight. By HBO. My fucking ally. A light in my life. My bringer of mind-bending entertainment. My inventor of imaginary friends and life changing allegory that have kept me afloat thus far. This betrayal runs deep.

I was watching In Treatment season two after getting my mum hooked on season one ; a captivating series following a flawed, potentially actual human-based therapist in self-centred crisis while trying his best to help his patients. Season two, episode two; introducing a new character. A new patient, first session: university architecture student, independent, sceptical, sarcastic person played by Alison Pill, who I already adore, and who makes me adore her character within a few minutes. Then she writes down what brings her to therapy; a note that reads “I have cancer”. I tear forms in my eye. It’s Lymphoma. My face grimaces and I start squirming in place. She has night sweats that drench her sheets. The tears start rolling down my cheeks. Hers is stage three. Pops had stage four by the time they found it. And now I can barely follow the show, I’m having flashbacks my dad’s fight, our family’s hope, and the horrible way that amazing mans life was taken from him. How everything he enjoyed about being alive was taken from him, piece by piece long before his life was taken by that exact disease. I don’t think I can watch anymore of that piece of the show. I just had a front row seat to that sort of horror show in real life. I don’t want to see it again, scripted and polished and a sanitized for tv.

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I just want to go home....I wish someone could tell me where that is.

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This year sucks. The last year really sucked but this one is sucking almost as much. First Christmas without my dad, their first wedding anniversary without my dad, birthdays without my dad, fucking Sundays without my dad. A constant flow of reminders of this incredible void left in our lives life. Every time I’m supposed to be happy I can hear his laughter in my head and my heart rips open all over again. Every time I cook something special I can hear him giddily exclaim “Are you fucking kidding me!” and I can almost feel him in the kitchen.

And I’m just drifting along, trying to stay afloat and take care of my mum, whose heart is broken even more than mine. I just need to keep it together for her. I need to make this suck just a little bit less for her. The woman is a saint and she doesn’t deserve this pain or this broken daughter of hers. I just need to keep it together a little longer for her.

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The love of my life promised me his unconditional love, he vowed to stand by me through good times and bad, he promised not to judge me and love me for who I am (faults and all), he has told me he would do anything for me, the man put his mother’s ring on my finger and wanted to go to city hall to marry me...yet twice he has left me. And twice he has left me so incredibly angry at me, I do not understand. And twice I believed all his promises. I thought he meant all of it. I FELT his love to my core....and it felt more real than anything I have ever known. He hasn’t just broken my heart. He owns what is left of it. He’s taken it from me, because I handed it over, because I laid myself bare and let him see every ugly part of me, when he swore he wouldn’t judge me, and I was stupid enough to believe it. For the first time in my life I actually needed someone, and it felt unbelievably awful to give someone that power. I’ve never needed ANYONE. I am a strong person, I take care of myself and I am the one that takes care of other people. I know it wasn’t fair of me to ask it, but just for a little while, I needed him to take care of me. Just help me. Just for a little while, till I could get my strength back....and he walked away and told me how awful I am.....he said I was repulsive.....and I am more devastated and broken than I even thought possible.

I never want to give anyone my faith or my trust or the power to make me feel this way ever again. I hate myself for being so weak.

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In the last 13 months, I’ve cried more tears than I had in the last decade. Not surprising given the circumstances. What surprised me was the visceral need to scream. Not a prissy yelp or a half-assed screech; full on, from the gut, blood curdling screaming. A scream from having one’s beating heart ripped from one’schest.

When things were looking grim with my dad, there were several times that my drunk ass asked my best friend to drive me somewhere, anywhere. And when I found a field that suited my needs I told her her stop the car, got out and walked to the middle of said field and screamed like Michael Myers had just found me hiding in a closet. I screamed till I was hoarse and crying and fell to my knees.

But that was when things were raw, now I manage my scream therapy with a little less drama; I drive myself and find an empty country road, I turn up the radio and scream by myself till every last note of rage has left my body. I pull over and cry for a moment. And once I’ve composed myself I calmly and steady handedly drive myself back to where I came from. It is the only thing keeping me sane right now.

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When my Pops was diagnosed with cancer last December, the whole day felt like a blur. But getting into the car with my mum while my dad had to stay at the hospital is the moment that was crystal clear for me. Mum said “He can’t give up. He needs to fight. We need to make him fight, GIRL” (Girl is going to be my pseudonym from this point on, I want to be annonymous). So I took that to heart. I got my dad a pair of boxing gloves. Beautiful white Everlast gloves (they’re mounted on my temporary wall as I post this). I gave him this pair of gloves and told him we needed him to fight. He needed to fight for us. And he used them as his inspiration for the valiant fight that he gave.

When he walked around the hospital, he put the gloves on his walker. I heard someone ask about them and he said “Yep, where’s the gym?”. A seventy-odd man with a walker, a broken hip and a stage four cancer diagnosis. He was so fucking funny .

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I watched my dad die last year. He was such a good dad, my Pops, he was incredibly funny, and smart, and talented, and a million other things. And this has wrecked me. It was like watching someone get washed out to sea; a wave came and took him a little ways out, then another wave came and took him even farther, then another and another, and so on and so on until I could barely recognize him. And then he was gone and it was over. My heart broke into a million pieces.

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The one phrase that goes through my mind a thousand times every day is “I want to go home”. And I’m really struggling with the fact that ‘home’ doesn’t exist anymore.

I have a roof over my head, and I am so greatful for that, but the comforting concept of ‘home’ is gone. It is lost, probably forever, and I hate it.