- Joined
- Jun 27, 2014
The recent move and the work involved in it's been grinding me down, my Kiwis. I've got a new place sussed out, and I have things set up, but there's so much to do and so much to clean that I'm going out of my mind down here just trying to contextualize stuff. I'm not going to lie: I'm running myself ragged. Barely able to sleep, barely able to think straight. I'm sure things will calm down once I've worked out where the hell I'm going to put everything. I dread the games of fucking real-life Tetris I've got ahead of me when I load everything in the truck(s).
During this moment of downtime, however, when I'm taking a few minutes to recover, I thought I'd share something going through my mind. Nothing makes one dread their own mortality quite like massive, sweeping life decisions, and I tend to remember things when I'm at my lowest, so I started recalling things I lost. People. Places. Friends. Pets, especially, since I can't have pets where I'm going.
I lived the bulk of my life in one house. Specifically, the one of my mother. During that time, I saw a lot of pets come and go. Cats, especially, since we always had cats. Lots of cats. And over the course of 2 and a half decades, that meant a lot of pets coming and going. There was a lot of tears, and the upside of it - the companionship and enjoyment we got from them - always made it worthwhile. A common thread amongst all our cats was that they tended to, in their final days, come back home. Most of our cats were outdoor cats, which meant they could come and go as they pleased. It was a little different for our male cats. They always engaged on what I called The Long Walk. In this, they'd embark on a minor pilgrimage in their closing days. They'd head through the woods, surveying their territory, seemingly going over their accomplishments one last time. They'd then return home, sometimes after beating up one of the locals, settle in, and then.... That was it.
Sometimes, they wouldn't come back from this trip. You'd find them later, having passed away peacefully sleeping under their favorite bush or having decided that on one of the big fallen trees in the woods is where they'd set down for the last time. Others you simply wouldn't find at all - but you knew why.
Sometimes you'd find them there, not much time left in them, purring away like a smug prick and resting in your lap as you stayed with them. Growing up, I never quite understood why so many of our cats would spend so much time away from home, only to come back to pass away. I didn't quite get it, I suppose. Now, on retrospect, it seems so obvious: They came back because they were happiest there, and they wanted to be comforted in that when things were at their lowest - whilst those that left on the Long Walk and didn't return did so because they did not want to burden the ones they cared about.
I've started thinking about stuff like that, and it slowly sinks in that I haven't felt attached like that to anything in some time. I'm sorry if I seem incoherent. I've spent the bulk of the last month barely sleeping and trying to keep myself sane when everything seems poised against me ever knowing stability. I thank you for lending a text-ear, Kiwis.
During this moment of downtime, however, when I'm taking a few minutes to recover, I thought I'd share something going through my mind. Nothing makes one dread their own mortality quite like massive, sweeping life decisions, and I tend to remember things when I'm at my lowest, so I started recalling things I lost. People. Places. Friends. Pets, especially, since I can't have pets where I'm going.
I lived the bulk of my life in one house. Specifically, the one of my mother. During that time, I saw a lot of pets come and go. Cats, especially, since we always had cats. Lots of cats. And over the course of 2 and a half decades, that meant a lot of pets coming and going. There was a lot of tears, and the upside of it - the companionship and enjoyment we got from them - always made it worthwhile. A common thread amongst all our cats was that they tended to, in their final days, come back home. Most of our cats were outdoor cats, which meant they could come and go as they pleased. It was a little different for our male cats. They always engaged on what I called The Long Walk. In this, they'd embark on a minor pilgrimage in their closing days. They'd head through the woods, surveying their territory, seemingly going over their accomplishments one last time. They'd then return home, sometimes after beating up one of the locals, settle in, and then.... That was it.
Sometimes, they wouldn't come back from this trip. You'd find them later, having passed away peacefully sleeping under their favorite bush or having decided that on one of the big fallen trees in the woods is where they'd set down for the last time. Others you simply wouldn't find at all - but you knew why.
Sometimes you'd find them there, not much time left in them, purring away like a smug prick and resting in your lap as you stayed with them. Growing up, I never quite understood why so many of our cats would spend so much time away from home, only to come back to pass away. I didn't quite get it, I suppose. Now, on retrospect, it seems so obvious: They came back because they were happiest there, and they wanted to be comforted in that when things were at their lowest - whilst those that left on the Long Walk and didn't return did so because they did not want to burden the ones they cared about.
I've started thinking about stuff like that, and it slowly sinks in that I haven't felt attached like that to anything in some time. I'm sorry if I seem incoherent. I've spent the bulk of the last month barely sleeping and trying to keep myself sane when everything seems poised against me ever knowing stability. I thank you for lending a text-ear, Kiwis.
