Saying Goodbye To An Old Friend

'Cat' is definitely valid in the scrabble dictionary, right?

A couple of weeks back, we had to take my cat to the vets to have him put down because he'd basically got too old to function properly any more. Don't worry, this isn't going to be a letter telling him how much I'll miss him kind-of-post (I've seen a fair few of these in my time), because 1) He was a cat and therefore was pretty unlikely to read a letter anyway and 2) I can't help but feel like these sort of posts can be a little ridiculous-full of emotion and grief and heartache and, to be honest, I don't really understand.

We got Midnight (aforementioned cat) when I was 6 or 7 so he was a pretty grand age for a moggy, and was showing it. He was half blind, probably deaf and for the past year or so had been becoming more and more decrepit looking as he stopped looking after himself properly-I have no doubts that this was the right thing to do for him.
It's slightly weird to think that he'd been around for 2/3 of my life though-he'd met all of my boyfriends and a lot of my friends,  and left lasting impressions (and by impressions I mean scars!) on many of them, as well as all of my family. He'd put up with horrible children poking and prodding and chasing him for the last few years with a remarkable level of tolerance to say that he'd never really had the nicest temperament and was just as likely to gouge chunks out of your arm as he was to curl up on your knee. He was basically the grumpiest cat in the world, but he was well loved 'til the end. But that's it really. I mean he was just a cat. I don't know if I'm just particularly pragmatic about these things or particularly heartless but I'm really not too sad that he's gone. I mean sure, I keep seeing bundles of dark-coloured-somethings and thinking it's him curled up somewhere until I remember that it's not, and yes, that makes me a bit sad but I'm not heartbroken by it, I'm not all emotional, I'm not grieving. My Dad cried at the vets a few times but my eyes were dry-I felt a little choked up as it happened but otherwise I'm fine about it, really. At the end of the day, he was a pet, not a person-I dunno, it just feels strange to me that people can get so tied up in grieving for an animal. We were asked if we wanted to cremate him, which seemed really ridiculous to me. It's a cat.

It did make me think though-this is the first time I have ever really experienced death on a personal level. I've been lucky enough to get to 23 years old and still have three living grandparents-which I know is something that not everyone is able to claim. My other Grandad died when I was 6 or 7, when I was too young to really care too much. I've never been to a funeral, even, and touch wood I won't have to for a little while longer yet. My grandparents are no longer in the greatest of health, and they, like the cat, are starting to look a little run down, but they're still here-for now. That's what I've really learned from this-that I should thank my lucky stars that the I've never known grief, that the only death I've ever experienced was that of my cat. And I know that this won't last forever, that one day I'll know the sadness of someone I love dying, but I will find a way to deal with that when the time comes. For now I'm just appreciating how lucky I am that all the people I care about are still here, for however much longer that will last.

My cat had a good run and was well loved and looked after, and had a painless end, and really, I can only hope that when the time comes I can say the same for me and the people I love.

-Jenni-

Letters to Mr. Nobody

[Source-Muffet on Flickr]

When I was with my first boyfriend, I developed a (bad) habit of writing him letters telling him all the things I couldn't bring myself to say to him because I was scared of the consequences (namely that I couldn't bear the thought that he might break up with me...again). I'd pour my heart out into those letters, smudging the ink with my tears (disadvantage of using fountain pens, right there) and telling him all the reasons he was making me unhappy and then...I'd never send them. I probably still have those notebooks full of my misery, full of letters that were never read by the person whose name they bore-he probably doesn't even know now how much I cried over him, over a relationship which I can now see (ah hindsight!) was already doomed to fail. Not even the strongest of bonds between people could be maintained with that wealth of unsaid words between them, and ours was certainly not what you would call a strong bond!

Why did I write the letters if I was never going to send them, I hear you ask? (I do, honest...) I guess I thought that if I could just get the feelings out onto paper, to feel the pain and cry the tears then I wouldn't feel them any more, that they wouldn't affect me when I was with him, that they wouldn't matter. Of course, that's nonsense-feelings don't go away because you took them out of your head and wrote them down, they still persist if you never speak to the appropriate person about them, unless you tell them that they're making you unhappy.

I tried harder with BoyfriendII to actually talk about stuff that was upsetting me, and for the most part it seemed to work much better-we had more arguments than me and BFI but felt like we tried to resolve them instead of pretending we didn't have problems and that our relationship was perfect. I stopped writing my feelings down as often, and when I did I showed him them-so we could discuss it and try to work through it. I felt like this was the much more mature and rational response to having a problem than just trying to hide it away from everyone and I guess it was really-airing grievances and all that, rather than leaving them to fester away in a drawer somewhere, niggling away at the back of my mind. Every sensible Discworld fan knows that words have powers of their own.

[Source-Open Clip Art Library]

I thought I'd left my letter writing habit behind me, more or less, but I recently seem to have fallen back into old habits. It's just easier to confess things to a reassuringly blank page than to tell someone something that might change the way they see you, or lead to judgement and condemnation. It's not just letters now, it seems, but blog posts too-I write them and never publish them for fear of revealing too much of myself and then never being able to go back to a point where it's not been read. I've got a letter full of emotions just itching to be sent, but I don't think I'll do it. I don't know if I can, or even if I should. I'm too hung up on the idea that telling people how I really feel just gives me nothing more than a million reasons to end up regretting it. I can't dissuade myself that revealing my emotions means that something will hurt me more than the contents of the letter ever would, that will make me wish I'd kept it safely tucked away in the dark with the rest of them.
Realistically I know that it's just a letter. A letter with some feelings in. Its something that by its very nature should be shared, should be read, a story that isn't told until seen with different eyes. Realistically I know that it won't make my world end, and that I really should just post the damn thing, if only as a way to get over the silly idea that the way someone reacts to something I have to tell them will just end up hurting me more, to get past the idea that feelings sometimes should be hoarded more closely than a dragon and its treasure.
Realistically, I know all this. Emotionally/Sub-consciously though? I'm not so sure.

What do you reckon?

-Jenni-

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I'm In Repair, I'm Not Together But I'm Getting There.

John Mayer-In Repair

Which just about says it all really.

This is the 3rd or 4th time I have written something about the subject of being single over the last couple of months, but each time I do the tone of the piece changes depending on how I feel. I went from being hopeful and optimistic to despairing that I would never find anyone who would understand me as well ever again to pondering just what I was supposed to do with this alien experience*. Now I'm just trying to get back to myself, and according to one of my friends I "seem to be more me" so hopefully it's working.
I'd never been heartbroken before, not really, and I was completely unprepared for just how much it would hurt (seems silly considering its name, but I hadn't really given it much thought). I was totally blind-sided with a kind of grief that I'd never known-I spent 4 days not eating or sleeping much at all and just went a little bit mad for a while. It did, of course, start getting better, but I still failed to see how anyone managed to function normally ever again after the break up of an important relationship, and failed to see how I would ever be OK about it.

We still talked regularly, he and I, still met up from time to time and I had to, on occasion ,stop myself reaching out to touch him as I always had done. Still I thought somewhere in the back of my mind that it would all sort itself out, that it would all come good and we'd start again, although not all of me believed this would happen, and maybe some small part of me, even then, didn't want it to.
I let myself get upset time and again whenever he cancelled a visit to see me for a better offer when I really should have been listening to my friends who kept telling me just to forget all about him and get on with life. But how could I forget him when so many things just kept reminding me of him all the time and life kept finding new and unexpected ways to make me cry all over again? So many things still do remind me of him, but now I refuse to do any more crying-I've done enough. Instead, I'm making new memories over the ones that always make my heart ache a little bit-by myself and with other people I am reclaiming the things we used to do together. I know it won't work completely-my brain is very good at remembering odd things when given a trigger for a very long time-but it will push back the memories of him far enough for me to enjoy the experiences again. Just another reason why I really want to move out of my parent's house-if I live in a place that he has never been to then it will be that much easier to not picture him there with me.

Another thing I was completely unprepared for was how many friends would disappear from my life alongside the one I was losing in him. (We tried to stay friends for a while, but apparently it's just too weird so now even that has lapsed.) Friends I thought would be in my life forever have since just stopped speaking to me. My (then) closest friends and confidants started to become less close even before the break up. I know some of their reasons for this, but it still hurts to think that they felt the need to pick sides of our relationship and that I wasn't the one that they chose. I won't go chasing after them though-if they have decided they don't want me to be in their lives then so be it, even if I do not share their sentiments.

Now we're at the stage where he has moved on and is in another relationship and I am OK with that. 2-3 months ago, the very thought made me sob-to think that he could find happiness with someone that wasn't me, let alone imagining myself getting there too. But getting there I am, and while I don't have anyone specific to move on to in the same way, I have noticed certain changes in myself that tell me I don't mind any more. I've started noticing other guys again, and in some cases had a good, long notice. I've been flirting which has been really rather fun, and it's nice to know my skills aren't too rusty after 6 years of under-use. I've started just enjoying life again, smiling at strangers in the street and laughing until it hurts. It's been a strange and unpleasant journey to this point, but it feels good to be here.

So am I over him? Not completely, no. There's still a part of me that would immediately say yes if he turned around and asked me to come back. But it's a small part, and it's a diminishing one. Am I getting there? Yes, I definitely am. Clichéd though it is, I am finally starting to see THE BREAKUP as less of an ending and more of a new beginning. And while I'm still not great at being single (I think some parts of me will always be happier when I am in a relationship), I'm no longer comparing myself to all the happy couples that I know and feeling sorry that I don't have that any more/jealously wishing they would take their happiness elsewhere. I will get that again, it's fine, and I'll hold on to that for now, thanks. But hey, if anyone knows any nice guys with a heart-melting smile** and a good pair of legs, it won't hurt to send them in my direction, will it? ;)

So yes. Definitely not together yet, but definitely getting there.

-Jenni-


*I've never really been single, not as an adult. I've been in two almost consecutive long-term relationships for the past 6 and a half years so I'm still really un-used to it-I did all my growing up and learning myself whilst being with someone so I have had to re-learn it all now that I am not.
** AC & MF: Oh Shush.