Ghost-of-a-Chance

Thanks for your support and kind words, everyone, and thanks for letting me vent. It’s been hard, but I think I’m past the anger stage now. To be perfectly blunt, I can’t express my feelings like that IRL because my husband is suffering too, and according to my dad, “Chances are stoic.” (No the fuck we are not, Dad. Your Silent-Gen parents just punished you for having emotions, and anger is an emotion. Being angry isn’t a substitute for feeling hurt, and I detest you for passing that on to me.) Just being able to do something besides cry on Heiferlump while Cold was at work has helped. 

We’re still struggling. Cold is drinking more often—fortunately, not much at a time—and forcing himself through. I’m using housework to dissociate and isolating from others. It’s not healthy, but it’s getting us through. I keep finding Woozle’s toys and furballs and choking up.

Heifer, by the way, is hanging in there for the most part. She’s finally dislodging herself from my colon for an hour or so at a time. Around the time I first posted, she jammed herself so far up my backside that I could smell her breath and wouldn’t be removed even long enough for a shower unless her dad stepped in as a substitute. It appears she worried that losing her brother might mean losing one of us, too, or maybe she recognized that we need her more than ever. Either way, she hasn’t started crying for Woozle that I’ve seen, and for that, I’m grateful; watching her go through that after losing her first brother broke me.

We’re hanging in there. It’s been hard, but we’re hanging in there.

Cats have a way of knowing when their people need them.  She knew that you needed her.

DemonGoddess, that’s the truth. Heifer’s first brother could recognize when I was experiencing the nastiest of my PTSD symptoms, and he used to react to them like a trained service dog. Fuck if I know where he picked it up from. Neither of us taught him, and his previous owner never mentioned it. All I know is when my PTSD was at its worst in 2011, I would wake up from hellish dreams to find him sitting on my chest and nipping, and I’d come out of flashbacks to him purring and headbutting me in the face. Hard. It was enough to pull me back to the present, and he’d stick around long enough for the shaking to stop. He was a godsend. Losing him was heartbreaking, but watching Heifer grieve him? Having to see her wandering around crying for him? That killed me. 

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned his trigger-recognition and response before. Maybe not. I tend to guard things like that closely in case my family finds my fan-persona and recognizes something. The last thing I need is to have my church-bigot parents demanding if I’m bi because I can’t lie to them save my life. Point is, yeah, Heifer surely recognized that I needed her like air, and she may have realized I’m feeling better enough to not need constant supervision. Unfortunately, she has started looking for Woozle and calling out for him. It had been a few days since the last time I cried – Woozle was my little Mama’s boy, and I feel like we let him down – but when I realized why she’s walking around crying, that reset to zero.

This has to get better. It just has to. I know time will help, but fucking hell, it sucks in realtime.