#oneaday Day 728: Giving yourself permission to smile

The thing about a grieving process — whether it is a result of tangible loss or, as in our situation, simply not knowing what has happened — is that it can very quickly and easily become all-consuming. It can take over your entire life; your entire mind; your entire heart; your entire soul.

silhouette of man sitting in contemplation — Photo by Andrew Patrick Photo on Pexels.com

There isn't necessarily anything wrong with that. Suffering a loss, regardless of the circumstances, is a difficult thing to contend with, and each of us approach the situation differently. Some of us prefer to completely, wilfully enrobe ourselves in the darkness for a time, then come out of the other side if not necessarily feeling "better", then at least feeling some form of closure and acceptance. Others of us take a more long-term approach, finding ourselves spending a portion of each day in quiet (or not-so-quiet) reflection on our loss, but trying to get on with things. Others still push all that grief and hurt down for as long as possible, then end up exploding in a passionate, emotional outburst once the pressure becomes too much for a mind, heart and soul to bear.

There is no one right way to grieve, and there is no wrong way to grieve, either. But it is easy to find yourself in a situation where you feel like you should be grieving all the time, and by extension end up feeling a curious sort of guilt if you are not actively grieving. To put it another way, one can feel like one is not "allowed" to do anything fun or joyful during a period of grief; it can feel something along the lines of "inappropriate" or "disrespectful" or maybe even "lazy" to not be actively grieving, even if that process is not particularly achieving anything. It can feel wrong to do something that you know will make yourself feel better, because some part of you wants to say that you don't deserve to feel better for one reason or another.

I know I am particularly prone to this. It happens any time I go through a grieving process. I find it very difficult to do regular, everyday things while I am going through such a process; there's a little voice in my head that repeatedly says that I should continue to feel bad about the bad thing that happened, that I should continue to be sad, that I should feel guilt over it, to the exclusion of being able to derive joy from things that, on a less unusual day, would be my go-to way of relaxing and unwinding.

I talked about this with my therapist today, and I already knew the answer, but talking about it made it easier to process. The answer is that you have to actively and explicitly give yourself permission to smile. It might feel difficult to smile, it might feel difficult to find something to smile about, but one sure-fire way of doing your own mental health a serious mischief is refusing yourself the permission to process something that is not miserable altogether. No-one can live in complete darkness in perpetuity; it's why it's a form of torture. And if there's one thing you really shouldn't do, it's torture yourself, particularly if the situation is one for which there is no real sense of culpability, and thus grounds for "punishment".

Thus, while we continue to feel all manner of emotions while we grieve for the uneasy, unknown, unresolved situation in which we find ourselves with Oliver, we must allow ourselves the permission to smile. We must allow ourselves the permission to take care of our own wellbeing. We must allow ourselves the permission to step back from the darkness and take a break to breathe, regroup, refocus and perhaps even reframe how we look at things.

This is, as you might expect, weighing very much on my mind given that we are supposed to be going on holiday on Monday. Without allowing ourselves the permission to relax while we are away, we will never be able to use that time away to rest, recover and recuperate from what has been a very trying time — and, if need be, to continue to face that trying time with renewed strength and fortitude on our return.

And thus I, here and now, give myself permission to smile. It does not mean I love Oliver any less, nor does it mean that I want him to return any less. It means that I am at least attempting to take care of myself, and the people closest to me. It's all I can do at a time where we simply do not know what will happen next.

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#oneaday Day 725: A spark of hope

Oliver still hasn't come back. We are, of course, still extremely worried and upset, and this is made all the more difficult by the fact that Patti has clearly realised something is wrong, too. She is very obviously looking around to try and find him, and earlier she let out an absolutely plaintive wail of a meow that made my heart absolutely break. I know, Patti. I want to make noises like that, too. But there is, at least, a faint spark of hope.

We've previously posted Oliver's picture and details on some local Facebook pages — the one thing Facebook is actually still vaguely useful for — and earlier today we took around a bunch of flyers to the houses and flats in the nearby vicinity. In the mid-afternoon I got a call from someone down the road; they weren't sure it was Oliver, but they had definitely seen a ginger cat on their back wall recently, and thought that he was "a very friendly chap".

Now, we're trying not to get our hopes up too much, because we know there is another ginger cat in the neighbourhood. The lady who called sounded like she hadn't seen the cat she saw before, however, which leads me to believe that it might, just might have been Oliver. There's also the fact that Andie has apparently encountered "the other ginger cat" and said that it was rather skittish as opposed to friendly; Oliver, meanwhile, has always got along with absolutely everyone he meets, and the personality of the cat our caller described very much sounded like him.

So we have not given up. We cannot give up. I refuse to give up. My heart is battered and bruised and broken from the last few days, and it is difficult to derive any joy from anything. But I cannot give up. I will not give up. He must be out there somewhere, and all we need to do is bring him home.

I do not yet know how we are going to do that, or indeed where he is. But this one little happening today helped me feel just one little spark of hope about the whole situation, and that is something that has been sorely needed since late on Sunday night.

I, of course, do not know how this particular episode of our lives is going to turn out. There is always the possibility that it will end in tragedy, and that is something I don't think I am prepared for. But, as my therapist has said to me on multiple occasions now, I am a survivor, and while I have faced many hardships on life's journey to date, I have made it through all of them so far.

I don't want to have to keep being a survivor, though. I want things to be nice, and happy, and free of worry, and neat. Life, however, is far from neat; simple existence is one of the messiest things imaginable, and I have not yet figured out how — or even if it's possible — to tidy it up.

And so, we continue. For now, we continue, not knowing. Tonight we will walk the streets once again in search of our beloved little man. And tomorrow is another day, whatever that might bring.

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Attempting to process some bad news

You'll hopefully indulge me for a while, as we had some devastating news today: our beloved cat Meg appears to have liver cancer, and there's nothing we or the vet are able to do about it aside from attempt to make her feel comfortable and loved for the immediate future.

Meg is just shy of 12 years of age, and neither Andie nor I are ready to say goodbye to her. She's been such an important part of our lives for so long at this point that I've been hit very hard by the sorrow of knowing that our time together is coming to an end. I won't speak for Andie, because she doubtless has her own feelings on the matter, but I can at least talk through how I'm feeling in an attempt to process the situation.

A bit of background for those curious: we've had Meg since she was about 2 or 3 years old. She was a rescue cat, but she and her companion Ruby hadn't been mistreated or anything like that; they'd simply been put up for adoption because someone in their former home turned out to be allergic to cats. We fell in love with both of them almost immediately, and they joined our family in 2016.

Ruby, sadly, had an accident in 2018 and left us well before her time, and Meg was clearly hit hard by the situation; she was clearly pining for the company of another cat. We suspect (though we've never known for sure) that Ruby may have been her kitten, which made the situation doubly sad. But we decided quickly to adopt another cat, both because we enjoyed having two cats around and we didn't want Meg to be sad. And so Patti, a nervous little black cat who had something of a troubled start to her life from the sound of things, joined us.

The relationship between the pair was initially somewhat cautious. Despite being a complete scaredy-cat (no pun intended), Patti had a habit of launching herself towards Meg at high velocity when she first arrived, making Meg a little uneasy about her. Over time, they came to tolerate one another, though, and while I know Meg would never admit it, I'm pretty sure they even came to like one another.

We knew something was wrong with Meg a few months back when we noticed she was looking obviously skinnier than she had ever done, and, taking her to the vet, it seemed that she had indeed lost rather a lot of weight. She had a blood test that came back without any real indication that anything was wrong, ruling out common causes of sudden weight loss such as hyperthyroidism and diabetes, but we were still a little concerned.

It took a couple more appointments, including today's, where she was put under general anaesthetic and examined thoroughly, to discover what was actually wrong with her. And now we're kind of at a loss. We don't want to lose Meg, but we also don't want her to suffer.

At present, she's actually doing reasonably well considering the circumstances, but she hasn't been eating as much as she has done in the past, which accounts for the weight loss. And, realistically, things are not going to get any better from here. But we're not ready to say goodbye just yet, so we've got some medicine to hopefully make her feel a bit better for now, and we'll have to see what happens from there.

I don't know if I want to say that death scares me, because I'm not sure that it's death itself that scares me. It's more the knowledge that I do not handle grief well at all, and the difficulty I have in picturing a life without someone or something that has been such a major fixture in it for so long.

Meg is such a precious, loved part of our family that even contemplating moving forward without her is enough to bring tears to my eyes. And the prospect of telling someone else "yes, it's time for her to die," as you regrettably often have to do with pets, is near-inconceivable. I don't know if I can do it. But it's also not fair to lumber Andie with everything.

Part of my brain knows, rationally, that all lives come to an end, and often a lot sooner than we would like, particularly when animals are concerned. That same part of my brain knows that it is the right thing to do to just let her go when simply existing is too difficult or painful for her. But another part of my brain says "what right do I have to decide that for her?"

I think part of why I have so much difficulty dealing with and processing this sort of thing is that there are no answers. There is no "right way" to handle it. There is no person you can go to for help and get everything resolved neatly and without pain. There is just that period of grief, pain and sadness awaiting, and I unfortunately know from past experience that when you're in the middle of it, it sometimes doesn't feel like you'll ever be able to break out again.

This is what scares me. I know that I will be completely devastated with grief for quite some time when it is finally Meg's time to pass on. And I can't help but worry about how I will cope when something even worse happens in the future. Because I know it will, one day. Hopefully not for a good long while yet, but it will.

The things I'm feeling are not, I suspect, unique to me by any means. But it's difficult to talk about them, which means it's difficult to find a suitable outlet to express and process the storm of emotions that situations like this bring to one's mind. I have been in floods of tears off and on all day, and I don't know what else I can do. Because there probably isn't anything else I can do.

Writing those feelings down is as good a solution as any for now, then, I guess. At least then I can look back on them after the fact and perhaps learn something from them — and hopefully those close to me will also have a better understanding about how I'm feeling and why I'm struggling.

In the meantime, Meg is now home and doing as well as can be expected. She's just had something to eat, as she hasn't had anything since last night, and I'm sure she just wants to get some rest now. She will be loved for however much time we have left together, and anything beyond that we'll just have to deal with as it happens.

#oneaday Day 117: Justifiably Short Post

Hello. I'm not at home. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know exactly why I'm not at home right now. It's, shall we say, a difficult time, but I have been graciously put up for the night by the lovely Amy Walker and her family, who have helped distract me a bit from the unpleasantness rattling around my head. Said unpleasantness is largely due to the fact that the crystallised memories in my flat were exploding in my face and making my eyes leak almost constantly. I was so angry, then so upset, then upset and angry. It was impossible to focus. Having got away from that for a little while, though, it's marginally easier to face everything. So thank you, Amy, for being awesome and taking me out of a situation that was sending my mind down some dark alleyways.

Someone else I need to thank for being awesome is Allie Brosh, who left a really, really lovely comment on this post. I'll let you go read it (and my gushing, emotional response) at your leisure rather than recreating it here. I knew that today was going to be unpleasant (I underestimated quite how much, but that's beside the point) but Allie's heartfelt gratitude for my post (and a similarly gushing email I sent her) truly made my morning.

Difficult times come and go. Sometimes really, really difficult times come and feel like they're going to stick around forever. That's how I feel right now. But when the difficult times go away again, all you're left with is awesome.

So to everyone who said something nice to me on Twitter today, to everyone who sent me a text message or an email of support today, to Amy and her family putting up with me coming over, talking crap, drinking their booze and sleeping on their sofa, to Allie Brosh for making me smile, to anyone who comments on this post – to all of you I say one thing.

Thank you. You are the things that make it worth not giving up. You are the things that give me at least a little hope for the future, even as dark as the place I'm in right now is. And once all those crystals have finished shattering, once I'm reborn as someone new on a brand new path, you are the ones who are going to still be there for me.

Keep being awesome. Good night.

PS. Sorry this post is so disjointed and stream-of-consciousey and doesn't include any stickmen. (Yet.) But at least a few of you understand exactly how I'm feeling right now. Others of you are sympathetic, empathetic, whatever you want to call it. Whatever. You hopefully all understand that my brain's a mess right now.

So on that note, I'm going to stop talking. Good night.