Time to 'fess up

I'm going to confess something to you. From April 2012 to April 2013 we experienced 5 deaths, attended 4 funerals, lost our last remaining grandparents, and both of our pets. And it was this final one, my cat of 17 years, that spun me into silence. I flipped out.

I had been preparing for her death for years, essentially ever since I moved in with Paul. She and I had been sole companions for over a decade and it was quite traumatic for her to move in with a boy ("What??") and a dog ("What the fuck??"). She was skittish, quiet, the runt of a litter found in a car engine, and it took her a year to trust me. Do you know how special that is? To be the only trusted one? It was like having a little wild animal around whom you had tempted with tiny bits of food to approach your campfire, the little animal creeping closer and closer, until one day you look down and realize it's sitting on your feet. You don't even breathe, not wanting to scare it off. 

That's what it was like—ever precious. And then she joined me on all my adventures.

When her time finally came I knew that no matter how much preparing I had done that I would still flip out. And so I let myself weep for days, and then on and off for weeks, and if the wrong commercial comes on or tender moment in a movie, I still tear up. 

But what I had not expected was the depth of flip-out. Her death, for some reason, made me doubt everything. This is sort of what happened to my head for a few months:

What has happened to my life? Who's that two-year-old in the other room? Who's this man sitting next to me? What is this, I own a stationery business? And I've fooled myself into thinking I'm capable of doing that?

Where did so many things go, those things I did when it was her and me alone? Where was art and staying up until 4am sketching, where was staying at the beach until sunset, where was staying at the cabin with a cat hiding under the bed when we heard a deer outside at night? Because it is always deer, not bears, definitely. Absolutely. It couldn't be bears.

Where where where did I go...

I stopped being able to do a happy blog, and I couldn't do an honest blog either, because I knew even my nearest and dearest were tired of hearing my confused dementia-esque repeated questions and flailings. When you do not recognize your life or your deepest self, you gotta solve it yourself. 

One of the things that I am receding from is social media. I have a whooooole lot to say on that front, which I'm still pondering, because if every single person in the business world is telling me I have to maintain social media then obviously I need to take them seriously. Perhaps. But sometimes, when things get to be too much, you have to slice off just a couple of things that are too much.

I am not solved, but I am pushing forwards. Right now with just a stick trying to force aside mental brambles and vines, I want to be strong enough to turn it into a machete, and go THWACK THWACK through the dead weight I've let twine up around my brain. 

I'm not even going to re-read this: here is my post. Please pardon any spelling errors...