Socks

I'd like to preface this blog by saying I really don't want people to think I am a constantly depressed person.

I am on my Christmas Vacation. I expected to spend it hanging out with friends and making memories with loved ones.

Which I have done.

But two days after I got back in town we discovered that the first cat I ever rescued has got cancer. More specifically she has a very large tumor on her bladders and it has traveled to her lungs riddling them with specks of cancer. Needless to say this has really put a damper on my holiday spirit.

This time last year I was spending every evening with my father in a psychiatric hospital. Since that time I have been working on a short story about dealing with slowly losing a parent to psychosis and old age. I feel like I have to deal with this a lot sooner then many of my friends because of my parents age. Apparently this scenario had happened to my dad before and the more times it happens in a persons life time the more likely it is to reoccur. YAY GENETICS!!

I have really tried to get into the holiday spirit by buying my friends plenty of gifts and spending time with them but I just can't make myself happy about this time of year. Which is very disheartening. I feel like everyone I know is so innocently happy and enjoying love, relationships, and naivete. It makes me very jealous.

Everyone says that its getting up off the ground after being beaten down is what makes a strong person. But, no one every tells you how really fucking hard that is.

My mom says the key is baby steps.

It's just hard to say goodbye to it all. We as humans long for nostalgia so much. Or at least I do. I mean why would we constantly recreate and reuse? The entire vintage movement and green lifestyle exemplify this idea, or they do to me.

I sit here typing this up with my cat wrapped in swaddling clothing. A large plush blue towel tightly encasing her. The pads of her feet are no longer smooth and soft like everyone imagines cat paws to be. They resemble my mother's very tired and cracked dry feet bottoms. Her toe nails are yellowed with age and have flecks of dirt underneath each tip. Her fur is now greasy and dandered with with flecks similar to snow. She is a tuxedo cat. Which means her markings are similar to the style of a tuxedo. A white belly with the majority of her fur being back and four very distinct white paws. Thus, my ten year old mind dubbed her Socks. Her fur has lost its beautiful luster and now every time I pet her I get a pang in y heart as I rub her small back. I can feel each vertebrae in her back like some prehistoric creature of old. But the hardest thing to look at is her eyes. That was the first thing about my cat Socks that caught my attention. He eyes were the most vibrant golden hue with a slight green cast to them. They look as if an artist filled a brush with oil paint and put to work his skill. I even wrote a poem about her when I was in eighth grade because of how fascinated I was by her. Her eyes now aren't as vibrant as they used to be, instead her eyes tell her age. They glisten in the light as if she were an elderly woman with cataracts. And sometimes I wonder if she can even reconginze me or my mom.

I know she is in pain and I know it is becoming increasingly closer to her time to pass on. But I don't want to let her go.

It is as if through losing her I really feel like I leaving childhood behind. She's one of the last pieces of my earlier childhood I have left. The house I grew up in has been remodeled and I no longer really have a room because I am away at school. I don't really have a "place" at home. I will always have a place with my mother but I am now at the age where I am creating my place in this world and that is extraordinarily frightening.

People always talk about how you shouldn't want to grow up fast because you'll miss it once you age. Of course they are right.

There was once a day long ago when an socially awkward 12 year old girl cried her eyes out and convinced her mother that the school was going to call the SPCA if SHE didn't take this cat home. It needed a home and a family as much as that girl dreamed of having a real family everyday of her life. The girl needed to fit in somewhere just like the cat needed the safety of a home. The girl could see it in the cats eyes and the cat could see it in hers. There was a mutual understanding between the two of them. What one lacked the other was willing to give. After all humans create families from what they are given. I wish I could steal back to this day with a blink of an eye. Because at least back then I created where I belonged.