Best to be the Changing Water

I feel like such a wreck. I still don’t know what I did that was worth throwing our whole friendship away.

I showered last night, for the first time in… nine days? Wasn’t until I pumped the soap into my scrubbie that it clicked: my soap is coconut, like my sunscreen, and it makes me think of beaches and you.

I lay awake at night, body exhausted and ready for sleep, eyes tired, brain wired and spinning a mile a minute with thoughts of you. Wishing, wondering, and digging at the wound in my heart like I can somehow carve those four months out of it and start again.


Also I think my cat is dying. He’s technically a senior cat now, nearly twelve (if his paperwork was accurate) and has been hyperthyroid for years now. I started treating him with cbd when I couldn’t afford the compound lotion I had to dose in his ears (which he hated, loathed, could taste, and despised) when I could hardly remember to do it twice a day let alone find him and struggle with him to get it done. He improved, drastically, seemed in less pain from his hips, lost a lot of the swelling and water weight.

This year he went from probably 18-20lbs of cat… to maybe 11-12lbs. I think he just.. stopped eating the dry food. He’s peeing a TON, he looks old man skinny, when I give him his treats laced with cbd he acts like he’s starving. I’ve been supplementing with wet food, picked up broth, picked up wet treats, anything to get calories in him. He also suddenly lost a ton of fur down his back when I brushed him one day, and his back was scaly/scabby… we’ve gone back to full grain free food, he got a bath with oatmeal and aloe shampoo, and he improved, but I’m still scared I’m gonna wake up and find him gone one day and I don’t know if I can handle that right now.

He’s been so much more affectionate. He laid down with his paws and chest on my outstretched hand yesterday and purred himself to sleep— terrifying me in the process when his head did the sleepy kitten trick and just BONK right into my hand. Of course, then he came up in my lap and decided to pee on me when he woke up, so it’s a mixed bag.

I’m so extra depresso it’s not even funny right now, and we’re just heading into SAD season to boot. I wish I could disappear, become someone else, somewhere else, or even just stop existing for a while. Existence requires too much upkeep. There’s all these things to do, this body to look after, these feelings like waves crashing over my head that won’t let me come up for more than a gasp at a time. Work to make money to keep a roof over me and mine, keep food in our bellies, keep gas in our cars, just live in this capitalist world. No energy for hobbies or even chores. I just want to turn my body over to someone else to run for a while, take a vacation via astral projection.


Yeet my consciousness into space, free me from the bondage of being human.


Don’t worry, I’m not dying anytime soon

Apparently the combination of large amounts of time left to my own devices, and recent time regularly spent keeping up with flawless_mask (because I want to, because I like to read when she writes, because I want to see more, know more about her. Now that she's writing, I think she's the only other person whose journal I'm actually reading with any regularity..) has left me wanting to write in my own journal.

It's interesting to realize that you're living your dreams, even more so to recognize that you're living someone else's. Not to the fullest extent, but then my dreams aren't fully realized yet either.

I'm sitting here, feeling both a sense of contentment, and a slowly growing sense of boredom and uselessness. I could be doing something. But this isn't my place, and I don't know exactly what I would do. I washed nearly all the dishes yesterday, did a quick vacuuming of whatever floor was available, and the couch to clear it of excess cat fur.

I have no tea.

This post is much more run-of-the-mind than even I usually do, I suppose.

So, anyways. I'm sitting here in James' apartment, having decided to spend my three days off from work here. What will I learn, living here more? I always find myself learning more about people when I start staying longer with them.

I found myself slipping, yesterday. I think I'm fine again this morning, *pauses as one of the cats murrs and demands her attention* ...though I'm feeling more tired and groggy than yesterday. I'm starting to wonder what will become of me come summertime, how I will be. Summer's been an especially tough time for me over the last few years.

He's so accommodating, he's so loving, I'm certain any issues there are can be worked out with nothing more than some conversation and time. I feel as though I'm living someone else's life.

Secretly, I wonder if, without my mother being who she is, I wouldn't have been in exactly the same situation as Zee. Fewer siblings, and I the eldest rather than the youngest. But nonetheless.

I wonder if that terrifying disorder could have been my own. I see traces of things in my own behaviour, catch myself wondering. When they're not always voluntary, when I have to fight so very hard to keep them under control sometimes.

Mayhaps, just a twist in my own thinking, but there it is. The potential. I wonder if the opposite could be true as well.

I only wish there was more that I could do for her, more that I could say to help. The best thing I can do is simply to be there, and to truly be there when she needs me most, difficult as that can sometimes be.

I can't imagine life without her now that I know her.

Okay, I can. But I don't really want to. She's one of those people in my life that makes me happy. One of the people that I want to have around for the rest of my life, and those are few and far between.

It's tough to type with a cat in your lap, especially a large one.

It's nice to know I'm accepted by the cats, now. They stayed in bed with me when James took his bath yesterday, both curled up on my chest, one beneath the covers and one above. Spike mostly doesn't hiss and spit and bite at me, now. When he does, it's generally because I've picked him up and thoroughly disgruntled him, and I laugh and put him down. He purrs for me, even when James isn't around; they both do.

Sassy mews for my attention, comes running over to get petted, and when I pick her up into my lap she cuddles, purrs, settles. After sticking her back claws into my legs a few times, of course, in the course of her getting comfortable.

I'm thinking I will go and get dressed, see about going down to the exercise room and playing around with the equipment for a little while, going for a walk. Doing something that isn't being cooped up inside, comfortable and cat-filled though that may be.