101 in 1001 (the second one)

A few years ago, I tried the 101-in-1001 project. You pick 101 goals, and you've got 1001 days to make them happen. I enjoyed it a lot, and managed to get to 77% completion in the time frame allotted. I've decided I'm doing it again.

As usual, I'm tracking with a spreadsheet (that is even color-coded), but here's a listed version of my goals!

Official start date is 1/9/19 and my finish date is 10/6/21. If there's anything on the list you want to join me for (or help me with), let me know!

ARTSY FARTSY
365 days of selfies • Create a CD of smule songs • Finish knitting blanket • Learn basic ukulele chords • Learn to beatbox • Learn to use sewing machine • Make a quilt • Make a visual piece about things I like/am proud of about myself • Make an Inspiration board • Re-open Etsy shop • Read 10 of The Greatest Books (https://thegreatestbooks.org/) • See a movie for all 26 letters of the alphabet (random order) • See a show at the Hippodrome • See a show at the Kennedy Center • Send out 50 birthday postcards • Sit for a professional photo shoot at the beginning of this list • Sit for a professional photo shoot at the end of this list • Take 5 rolls of film photography • Visit 10/18 DC Smithsonian locations • Watch 5 Steve Carell movies


FOODIES
Bake my own bread • Figure out how I like to take my coffee • Figure out how to eat lobster • Have a crab dinner • Learn recipe for homemade dough • Make macarons • Re-instate monthly pizza night • Whiskey tasting


GET OUT
100% completion of Disney attractions • Attempt skiing/snowboarding • Colorado Springs trip • Go hiking • Go kayaking/canoeing • Go on a picnic • Go to California Disneyland • Go up in a hot air balloon • Go zip-lining • Pee outside • Ride a horse • See an MLB game • See an NBA game • See an NFL game • See an NHL game • Take a ballroom dance class • Take the train somewhere • Touch the Pacific Ocean • Visit a trampoline park • Visit Acadia National Park • Visit all 48 continental states • Visit NYC and do touristy things • Weekend camping trip


HOLLY HOMEBODY
Book cleanse • Collect 10 more Starbucks mugs • Collect all 34 Tsum Tsum chapsticks • Figure out lanai seating • Get a dog • Get rid of Justin's drums • Organize hall closets • Organize laundry room storage • Paint the sunroom • Plant some basil • Plant some hydrangeas • Reevaluate my belongings and minimize ~stuff~ • Replace kitchen cabinet handles • Sort through clothes, get rid of ones that don't fit or that I haven't worn in over a year


MY BEST SELF
Be consumer-debt-free! • Bolster Emergency Fund • Buy a new (to me) car • Buy a pair of boots • Close exercise ring 50% of the month for 3 months in a row • Complete a 5k in under 45 minutes • Find a place to volunteer regularly • Find out my blood type • Get a professional massage • Get out of the pre-diabetic range • Get to a healthy BMI • Have a 2 day Hotel Staycation and don't speak to anybody • Have a monthly #TreatYoself night for 6 months • Learn to drive a manual • Lose 100 pounds • Perfect 5 hairstyles • Renew passport • Ride my bike once a month for at least 6 months • Rollerskate once a month for at least 6 months • Social media free for 24 hours • Throw a 33rd birthday party • Try acupuncture • Try cupping • Update glasses prescription • Walk/run 500 miles (THE PROCLAIMERS)


WITH FRIENDS
Befriend 5 new dogs • Create bi-monthly outing group, organize 6 outings • Host a fancy-dress dinner party • Host OR attend a bonfire • Orchestrate a surprise for a friend • Organize a Smule meet up • Spend a full day with les bebehs (so Katie and Justin can take a break) • Visit Chele in Tennessee • Visit Meg in Utah • Get married • Have a baby

On being tired

I'm tired.

I'm so tired that I've included that in my dating profile.

"in need of sleep or rest; weary"
"no longer fresh or in good condition"
"boring or uninteresting because overfamiliar"

Part of my exhaustion is this sickness I've been carrying around for the last week. My tonsils are swollen, and post-nasal-drip is making my throat feel raw. Half of the time, I can successfully breathe through my nose, but a lot of the time I'm gasping for air through my mouth (MOUTH-BREATHING is there anything worse). Sleep is hugely impacted by this, especially because my severely obstructive sleep apnea requires me to use a CPAP so I don't die in bed randomly one night, and sickness plus CPAP is just kind of a mess. I think I've been averaging 5 hours of (interrupted) sleep lately because I wake up panicking about suffocating myself accidentally.

I think more of my exhaustion comes from a general emotional fatigue, though.

My head is a heavy place lately.

Lola passed away, and my parents spent two weeks in the Philippines to celebrate her life and be with family. My passport expired and I am poor, so I didn't join them, and that made me sad. I wanted to be with my family during that time, especially since the majority of my Filipino family members are people that I only remember from our Facebook interactions. The last time I was in the Philippines was for my Lolo's funeral when I was...maybe 10? Maybe 9? I wonder how much of my existential loneliness comes from half of my family being oceans away.

Dating is exhausting. It's been over two months since I started actively trying to meet men, and for the most part it's been disappointing. All of us have so much baggage, and the generalization I'm getting from these single dudes my age is that they know they're damaged but don't actually want to change or be better. There's this general attitude of "I know I'm terrible, accept this about me because this is who I am and I will not change", which...is disappointing.

Also, I should start a club for all these introverted workaholic 30-something dudes that like boardgames because they should all be friends with each other instead of trying to hook up with women that are cool and secure in themselves and ENJOY self-improvement.

I'm not saying that I'm Team Forever Alone, because statistically that is unlikely, especially if I were to be willing to adjust my standards a little. But it does seem like it's difficult to find anyone that is compatible and comparably close to me, with the desire to make things work for themselves and with someone else, and who has a face I would like to lick while also being content to just sit around watching TV. Sometimes I wonder if I should've been searching for someone earlier in my life, even if I wasn't ready for anything then. And then I remind myself that it doesn't matter what I should've done because time moves in one direction (so far) and there's no point in regretting the past while still zooming forward.

All this just to say that I'm tired, and my current struggle is trying to figure out what will make me feel more awake (woke?) in my life. That's the current question I'm rolling around my brain, and the current puzzle I'm trying to assemble.

On Life and Death, and creating meaning from both.....

Last weekend, my grandma passed away in her sleep. Two days after, her sister also passed away in her sleep. It's been a rough week for my family.

My mom had to write (or help write) her mother's obituary, and she was struggling with what to say and what to include. How do you summarize a life that lasted 84 years into a few paragraphs? What are the most important things? I posed this question to my mom, but the asking was really more to myself.

I've spent the last week trying to think of what I want people to think about me after I'm gone. This is a struggle, because a) what do I care what people think about me when I'm not even around anymore and b) because it's HARD to pinpoint what we want to be known for. Every day is a new chance to reexamine and recreate ourselves into the people we want to be, and sometimes it feels like I'm stuck in a complacent life because it's comfortable and easy and because real lasting and meaningful change is hard.

I keep saying things are hard or difficult or rough. But isn't that the essence of life? We're fed lines like "nothing that is good comes easy." There must be some truth to that.

Are you able to ask yourself honestly -- who am I? Who do I wish that I was? Is there a substantial difference between the two? How can you close that gap?

When I die (or even while I live, if I'm REALLY honest), I want to be known for kindness and thoughtfulness. I want to be known for making life a little less lonely, both for myself and for others. I want to be known for being hardworking and determined and reliable. I want to be known for my hospitality, and for being an encouraging friend, and for running and gardening and being well-read and even-tempered and good at meditating. Some of these things I am already. Others? There is still a long way to go before I can truthfully call myself all of them.

On other people's opinions of bodies that aren't theirs

I've been trying REALLY HARD to get into online dating because if I want to be in a relationship someday, I need to meet people to date. It's been an adventure, and while some of it has been a GREAT ego boost (like how I've been on 3 First Dates that all ended with guys wanting to take me out again, regardless of whether or not I wanted to see them again lol), some of it has been really really hard.

To minimize the emotional impact it has on me (because socializing is HARD WORK), I have a whole system worked out on Bumble, which is where I do my online dating (I had a few accounts on other free dating sites, including OkCupid, but somehow my experiences on those were almost all terrible, so I was like JUST BUMBLE IT IS). If we match, I send a copy-paste generic message as an opener to break the ice -- and I even state in the message that it's a copy-paste because "coming up with unique icebreakers just to be ignored is kind of exhausting".

The responses to this have been INCREDIBLY INTERESTING. It's ranged from silence or even unmatching, to notes of appreciation or funny jokes, to one guy who read it and immediately asked me to go out with him. Not all the responses are good, not all of them are bad.

One guy, though, chose to respond with "You're too fat to have these messages", which prompted me to reply with a smartass "And you're too much of a rude asshole to get a response after this."

Most people who know me know of my own struggles with my weight and my self-image and my self-esteem, and how it's been (and continues to be) a hugely uphill battle with myself. This stranger managed to hit me right in my Achilles Heel, and on a stronger day it might not have phased me much.

Yesterday, though? I was tired from a long (AND FUN) weekend of hanging out with friends and family, and I was already emotional from PMS-ing, and that comment stung. I CRIED. I cried and then I went to my friends for reassurances and commiserating in what a [bad word] this guy was being, and how I wished I could show his mom what he said to strangers, and how I hoped this wasn't indicative of who he was as a person because that was just sad.

In general, I try to choose kindness. I have moments where I don't succeed in it, usually when I'm tired and my patience has worn thin. There's a lot of truth to the phrase "hurt people hurt people"*, in my opinion.

I'm lucky. When my feelings are hurt like this, I'm usually able to pick myself back up, through my own stubbornness and determination, and because I have people who love me and who will not hesitate to remind me of why. I feel sorry for this random dude that cares so much about the weight of strangers on a dating app that nothing else about the person matters -- especially because I'm kind of great, and a good person, and regardless of my current weight or body shape, he's missing out on someone who puts a lot of effort into making other people happy. I MEAN, I AM ALSO WORKING ON MY OWN HAPPINESS, TOO.

I'm not sure why I'm sharing this. Maybe it's because I think vulnerability builds character, and if it's uncomfortable for me to talk about it usually means (to me) that I should. Maybe it's because a guy asked me recently why my self esteem was so low. Maybe it's because another guy asked me why my initial message to him included the sentence "I'm smart and funny and fat" when "skinny people probably don't say they're smart and funny and skinny" (his words). Maybe it's because I talk a big game about loving and accepting myself, but that's hard to do when complete strangers are so comfortable telling you their thoughts about your body.

Maybe I just want to admit for a second that sometimes I hate what I look like because I have interactions like this and they suck.

I'm just glad that my tears lasted for less than a length of a Boyz II Men song (last night was a 90's R&B slow jam night), and that in the moments when I don't have the mental strength to tell myself (a la Christina Aguilera) YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY, I've got people who will remind me until then. And will threaten to hunt the meanies down and punch them in their mean faces (but not actually do it because we do not condone violence).

Other people probably aren't so lucky. This guy probably doesn't have many people feeding him kind words, or maybe I'm just trying to come up with excuses and reasons as to why kindness wouldn't have been his first choice reaction.

*A scene from the new season of Arrested Development has Tobias telling this to Lucille in attempts to make her a better person, and she responds with something like, "Oh I like that" which SURPRISES EVERYONE because I'm sure we were all thinking WHAT Lucille trying to be nice? but then she continues and says, "I usually think 'make people cry, make people cry'" at which point you realize she's completely misunderstood what Tobias was saying lol.

On first dates.

I've been on three first dates in the last ten days. This is HUGE for me, because I kind of accidentally took a dating hiatus from romance for the last ten years. It wasn't like I was intentionally avoiding dalliances with men (WHO SAYS "DALLIANCES WITH MEN" EVEN? SOMEONE WHO ISN'T HAVING THEM, THAT'S FOR SURE), but I was not actively seeking them out and I've discovered that if you're not looking for love at all, sometimes it seems to forget to look for you, too.

So I've jumped back into the dating game. It's hard work, and emotionally exhausting, and most of the time I wonder if it's even worth it, but then I remember that having a family of my own is a goal that I'd like to say I've reached someday, and if I'm not meeting anybody then that's 100% not going to happen.

I've heard all kinds of dating advice from people, but if I'm honest: most of it has gone in one ear and out the other. I must be doing something right, though, because all three guys I've had first dates with have asked me out for second ones. I told myself (on the advice of Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance) that I'll go on two dates with everyone if I'm only feeling lukewarm about them. First dates make people nervous, and I don't know if nervous-them is an accurate representation of who they are and how well we connect. So yeah.

THREE DATES. I'M KILLING IT. It's weird to think about it too much, because I don't particularly like online dating -- it feels strange and unnatural to start any kind of relationship with romantic intentions, and I prefer to get to know people as friends and JUST PEOPLE before moving any further. But clearly that hasn't worked for me in the past, so I'm trying something new. A year ago, I wouldn't even be willing to schedule dates with men, let alone follow through and go on them. PROGRESS! Personal growth!

I'm proud of myself, but also exhausted. If you're in a relationship please hug your significant other. If you're not in a relationship and you're okay with that and you're not looking for a significant other, hug your pet or sibling or best friend, or whomever it is that provides you with love and affection in your day-to-day life. This process is tiring, and it makes me want to work harder to appreciate the people who so freely give me love regularly.

Being Too Much

Facebook notified me that a year ago today, I made a post about how I felt like I was Too Much, and I was struggling with learning to cope with those feelings.

Being Too Much is something I've felt for a lot of my life. I've always had a lot of feelings, and have often struggled with how to express them without being overly-dramatic or appearing to be crazy. My emotions make me impulsive sometimes, and it's hard to explain-away the brash behavior once my rational mind kicks back into gear.

It was kind of cool, though, to reflect on how I feel about my "muchness" this time this year in comparison. I feel like I've come to terms that I am ~different~ in some ways, and that some of those ways are good and some are...less good. It's almost weird to feel okay with this aspect of myself. In the past, it's always been something that I tried to hide or compensate for, and it often made me feel ashamed of myself. Now, it's just. Me. I am a lot sometimes.

I can point out almost exactly what has led me to this sudden self-acceptance, and it's been the people who love me. They say that if you hear something often enough, you start to believe it. I frequently use this trick to desensitize myself to information, and I'm so lucky that I've surrounded myself by people that share in positive affirmations.

It's taken me years, but I feel like I've finally found the people who really get me. That's not to say that all friends I've had in the past haven't understood me, or that they weren't good enough friends. But the people that I'm close to right now feel like they click better with me and my life than in the past. I'm sure most of it is my own ability to open myself up to these friendships in much more vulnerable ways than I was able to when I was younger.

No matter HOW or WHY, the fact is that I am surrounded by amazing people these days, and they tell me pretty regularly that I'm great. We all love to exchange compliments and affirmations, and because we're receiving them more often, we're getting better at accepting them. Without the affirmation from my friends, I don't think that I'd have been able to come to terms with my Muchness at the speed that I have.

I may be too much for some people, but I am more than enough for others, and sometimes having that emotional parachute to catch you when you feel like you're falling seems to be enough to keep the mean thoughts away.

On adulthood and expectations.

I didn't want to write this blog.

Not this ENTIRE BLOG, I mean this specific entry. It wasn't even that I didn't know what to write about, as I had three or four prompts in my head. I made a goal for myself to update on Tuesdays, because I like routine and once a week seems reasonable enough. WRONG.

I forgot. I mean, it's on my to-do list, but then I forgot and got wrapped up in the various day-to-day life tasks, and then Tuesday was gone and my blog wasn't updated.

When you're a kid, nobody tells you how much of adulthood is just forcing yourself to do things that you don't particularly want to do. Right now, I have dishes to wash, clothes to put away, clothes to wash, a fridge to clean out, sheets to change, floors to be vacuumed, a bathroom to be scrubbed, exercise to do...the to-do lists are endless.

How many of us are the people we thought we would grow up to be?

If you'd asked child-me what life would be like when I was 31, I'm not sure what I would say. I'd probably have said something about being married with at least one child, some kind of furry pet, Disney vacations, a big house complete with housekeeper -- as creative as I was then, I don't think I had any kind of real imagination when it came to my future.

I do not think that it would've ever occurred to me that I'd be a twice-over college dropout working a decade in graphic design and printing. I don't think I would've thought that I'd still be in Southern Maryland with weekly dates with both my sister (and the nephews) and my parents (it's Wednesday, which means it's Rosary night with ma and da). I don't think that it would've occurred to me that I would have problems with spending, or that I'd have problems with eating, or that I'd have so many body issues in general.

It's not that I'm ashamed of the life that I ended up growing into. I know my path here was forged by years and years and years of small decisions that shaped where I've ended up. I know that it's not the simple and perfect life that adolescent-Christa had dreamed about, but it's what I ended up with.

On the upside, I also don't think that my younger self would've imagined my move to Florida, and the 25 visits to Disney World during that year. Or the number of times I've had ice cream for breakfast. Or the number of cats I've lived with (have I mentioned that I LOVE CATS?).

Recently, I found a quote saying, "You should never regret anything in life. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience." I'm working on internalizing that. By these standards, I've gotten myself into A LOT of situations in which I've set myself up for learning from experiences. LOOK AT HOW GREAT I AM AT ACCIDENTALLY TEACHING MYSELF LIFE LESSONS! That's an achievement, I guess.

Regardless of where I thought I'd end up, I am where I am. I can either feel crappy about it and wish things were different, which seems like a waste -- or I can continue to try and find the good things and the valuable lessons I've learned, because this is a life that is uniquely mine. Even if it's not ideal according to 12-year-old Christa's standards (I think she'd be horrified, if I'm honest), I can at least take some comfort in my own sense of individualism, and the fact that I am very loved by my family and friends, and that's all a lot of really want if we simplify it all.

On being nearsighted, and closure.

I have terrible vision. I don't know if it's hereditary, or a result of not enough carrots as a child, or too many nights attempting to read the Boxcar Children in dimly lit rooms and hoping my parents didn't notice that I was up past my bedtime. Whatever the cause, without my glasses, I can hardly see anything past two feet in front of me clearly.

This is probably a good life metaphor for me.

I am TERRIBLE at thinking about the future. The question "Where do you want to be in five years?" incites no real reaction from me, because my first thought is always, "Well, I'll either be alive or dead" and that's about as specific as I manage to get on a good day. I'm sure this is stressful for the rest of my family -- they are planners of the highest order. My dad has had his retirement planned out for at least the last decade, my sister and her husband are probably planning theirs...I don't even know what I'm having for lunch in a few hours.

This is a mighty flaw of mine -- a belief that things will either work out (or they won't), and I'll either have to deal with it (or I won't).

This morning, I was stumbling around my bathroom, bleary-eyed and without my glasses, because sometimes I do that, and I looked up at the ceiling and noticed a dark blur. Because the ceiling is tall and I am not, it was just a fuzzy black spot to me. I had no idea what it was, and so I speculated that it might be a random paint stain, dirt, a bug -- A SPIDER? No idea, and because I had no idea, my mind came up with increasingly terrible things it could be, quickly spiraling into the irrational (seriously, there's no way it could actually be a tiny portal to another dimension, right?).

The end of my last relationship was like that.

I didn't get concrete reasons on why it ended. Something just CHANGED, and then all of a sudden the man I thought I loved was no longer in my life. There were mumbles about how I deserved better, about how I needed different things than he could give me, that distance was too far, and all I could think was that I was not enough. He never said that, but that's what it felt like -- that I was not enough of whatever, or that I was too much of something else, and that's why he couldn't promise to love me anymore.

Nothing made sense, and when things don't make sense, my creative brain attempts to fill in the blanks.

Here are the things that I've considered could be the reason why we didn't work out:
- I am too fat
- His family hated me and he didn't want to deal with a schism between myself and them
- I've never had a dog before
- He looked up my credit score
- I am too fat
- He realized he'd made a terrible terrible mistake in agreeing to be my boyfriend
- He spoke to an ex of mine and decided it wasn't worth it
- He was using me for my money and then realized I had none
- I am too fat
- He found out I read the Fifty Shades of Gray trilogy in its entirety (I WANTED TO BE ABLE TO MAKE FUN OF IT WITH INFORMED DECISIONS)
- He loves camping too much and couldn't deal with the fact that I can't sleep without my CPAP and a source of electricity
- He was never actually real and I was being catfished the entire time
- He saw how pretty my sister is and decided he didn't want to be with the lesser sister and so he had to ditch me altogether
- I like carbs too much
- His dogs might not like me
- He was kidnapped and forced to break up with me but he didn't actually want to but now he is IN DANGER and I can't just give up on him because what if he's in TROUBLE?!

I think anyone that has had a relationship end can relate. Your insecurities come out in FULL FORCE when you have to confront them because of rejection. You wonder WHY, and then when they tell you, you don't believe them anyway. Your brain becomes your worst enemy, and the creativity that you've always enjoyed becomes a burden because you're able to come up with increasingly terrible things about yourself to try and rationalize away the hurt. You've never resented your imagination like this.

At the end of it, though, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter WHY he left, because the reality you're faced with is that he DID. He left. He gave up, and walked away, and even if he did it to save you from ninja kidnappers that were going to assassinate you and your entire family, you were somehow not worth the fight anymore in your head. That's how you understand it.

My last relationship ended, and my feelings are valid. I am allowed to feel hurt and abandoned and sad, because I had expectations and hopes for it, and now I'm having to reform them. Change is hard, no matter how welcome or expected it may be. I keep telling myself that I shouldn't be upset, that it wasn't that long anyway. I shouldn't be upset because my day-to-day life doesn't change much with his absence, no matter how much my brain tells me otherwise. I shouldn't be upset, because my friends and family want better things for me and are seemingly relieved that it didn't work out. I shouldn't be upset, because so many things were keeping us apart anyway.

But fuck that. I am allowed to be upset because I thought I was in love, and it was a wonderful feeling that I hadn't experienced in actual YEARS. I am allowed to be upset because I thought he was my friend, and now he is a ghost, and I have to wonder if I imagined everything. I am allowed to be upset because I am a person with emotions, and because my heart is broken, and my heart doesn't understand time in the same way my brain does.

With my glasses back on, I returned to my bathroom to try and figure out what I had been speculating about. There was a brown stain on the ceiling that I'd never noticed before. And right next to it, there was a spider. I have no idea which I'd been wondering about.

There will always be questions. Sometimes we have to learn to shrug and accept that we won't always have answers.

Something New.

Previously, this blog was used to document various experiences with no truly specific purpose, and no consistency. Years would pass between blog posts because I had no idea what to talk about.

That's changing now, which is proof that I am enthusiastic and stubborn, and we'll see how long this experiment lasts.

I'm 31 years old. Turning 30 in 2016 was actually pretty chill, despite the impending existential dread that everyone warned me would descend upon my life and wreak chaos. That never happened, but maybe it was just delayed -- I'm turning 32 in a month and a half, and suddenly I feel panicky about LIFE and what it means, and what I want, and who I am, and where I want to be.

According to a random life expectancy calculator, I could be expected to live to be 85 years old (which is actually less than my peers, thanks to my current weight and lack of exercise). I mean, I DON'T EVEN WANT TO LIVE THAT LONG but okay. If that were to be true, then I'm not even halfway through my expected lifespan, and WHY SHOULD I PANIC ABOUT MY GENERAL EXISTENCE?

If only logic worked when it game to anxiety and feelings. It doesn't, and that's why we're here.

I'm struggling with a lot of things: who I am, where I fit in my family, where I fit in the grand scheme of things, what I'm capable of, who I love, who loves me, where I want to be, what I want to do, what I want to be known for...the things that run through my head about the possibilities of my life are, frankly, exhausting. For years, I've been an advocate for self-care and mental-health-awareness, and I guess this blog overhaul is just another means of doing that.

I don't know what I want from life, and some days I don't even know who I am, but I'm going to try and figure it out. My reflections will be posted here, and if you end up reading this, thank you for letting me expose the vulnerability of uncertainty in a society that wants us to always have it together.

I'm Christa, I'm 31, and I'm looking -- although what I'm looking for isn't clear quite yet. Let's do this.

Emotional Talk about Losing a Pet

The word "pet" doesn't have enough meaning in our language, and while it's defined as "a domestic or tamed animal or bird kept for companionship or pleasure and treated with care and affection", that doesn't seem like ENOUGH. There should be a special word for the animals that we take into our houses and our hearts, the animals that become so much a part of our day to day lives that you can't remember what life should be in their absence, the animals that we care for and take care of, the animals that become these bizarre non-human family members that are a mix between sibling and offspring, not quite our children but also not our peers.

We are in charge of them, and in charge of their health and safety, and in exchange they help us care about parts of ourselves, and they oftentimes teach us how to love ourselves and each other in better ways with their own uncomplicated and unconditional affection for us.

We put Felix down yesterday. She would've turned 17 this month, and late last week she stopped eating. Over the weekend, we took her to the vet and they diagnosed her with an advanced kidney disease, and we made the hard decision to put her to sleep rather than force her to endure a lower quality of life and some harsh treatments.

She was an old kitty, and she was tired, and she lived a good life, and I will miss her. I haven't even known many PEOPLE that I've been close to for 17 years, and we got Felix when I was 12 and got straight A's. My relationship with that cat outlasted four boyfriends, multiple best friends, four different schools, me living in two different states and five different houses, and a wealth of life lessons between the day I brought her home for the first time and bringing her Home yesterday.

I couldn't be at the vet with my family because I didn't think I could emotionally handle being there for that. I'd been crying off and on since Friday, and when we took her to the vet on Saturday I could hardly hold myself together and my mom had to answer all the questions because I couldn't speak. Katie thought one of us should be there for her at the end, and I couldn't do it. A part of me feels cowardly for not being able to, but the rest of my family was there with her so I can take some comfort in knowing that she wasn't alone.

We buried her in the backyard next to a tree that will have yellow flowers come spring. My parents had her paw imprinted in clay. My mom bought a little brown cross, and in the clearest handwriting I could muster, I wrote "March 1999 to March 2015. Felix was the best cat." on it. I might bedazzle it, because the plain brown is not notable enough for my little cat with her big personality.

I think I haven't really processed her absence, but the last few days were terrible, with seeing how slow she was moving and her rapidly declining health and I don't want to remember her like that.

Felix was named for her black and white markings because we originally thought she was a boy when we brought her home. She was the runt of her litter, and I picked her for her small size (something I could relate to with my own lack of height) because I've always loved the unexpected underdogs. She would sometimes bite people, and she taught herself to ring the doorbell to make us let her back inside. She was great at sitting on laps and in boxes, and anywhere else it was inconvenient for her to plop down on (frequently on my books or papers while I was trying to work on them) and had a wonderful purr. If you let her into your bed, she would snuggle up under the covers and nuzzle your feet. She hated other animals, was unafraid of dogs twice her size, and had a sassy attitude that made roughly half of my friends and any visitors to the house fear her. She loved cheese and Doritos and vanilla ice cream (we didn't purposely feed these to her, but she always managed to find a way to sneak a bite when we weren't paying attention), and was amazingly tolerant of all the times I cried into her fur (which was A LOT over the years, as I am ... very emotional and incredibly dramatic).

When I played piano she'd sit next to me on the bench and listen to me. I'd often pretend I was Jenny and she was Oliver (OH GOD I MADE THE MISTAKE OF WATCHING THIS VIDEO AND NOW I THINK I WILL NOT STOP CRYING) from Oliver & Company, even though neither of us had the right coloring of our animated and copper-haired counterparts.

She was a good cat, and she was my cat, and I will miss her dearly. I am so lucky to have had so long with her, and so lucky that my life has been so sheltered from death and sadness that this heartbreak of losing a beloved family pet is a brand new sensation I'm only just discovering at the age of twenty-eight years old. I've been so blessed and so loved, and I take comfort in knowing that Felix was also so so loved. Through all of this, I keep reminding myself, "I am so lucky. We were so lucky. We are all so lucky" to have had each other, and to continue to have each other in the family and friends that remain. That's the real magic of allowing yourself to love and be loved: with any and every heartbreak, love in my life somehow never actually diminishes, even if it sometimes feels like there are fewer hearts to spread it around to.

There was a moment during the last few days, when I was incoherently sobbing over the impending loss of Felix, that I thought, "I wish I had never had her, because losing her now is too much and I cannot deal with it." and in the quiet of my heart, while locked in the soft gaze of her hazy green eyes while I stroked her black and white fur as we laid on the cold kitchen floor together, another voice in my head whispered a little louder, "Never regret anything leading up to moments of pain like this, because getting to love her for seventeen years has made any of this sadness worth it. In moments when you have a choice between love and fear, always choose love."

So thank you, Felix, for reminding me that honestly and freely-given love is always worth it, will always be worth the tears at having to say goodbye to it*. Always choose love.



*In typical disclaimer fashion, I feel the need to point out that the love I am talking about being worth the pain is a healthy love, and not something that is causing you physical or emotional pain. So. Just keep that in mind. Don't choose that kind of love, as that is not love. Okay bye.

On love and loss.

Recently I was asked the best way to heal a broken heart.

Look, there's no easy way to tell you this, but there is no best way. One of the last times my heart was broken, I cried in my bed for days, almost like it was an obligation I had. Curled up in the corner of a thin mattress, hidden from my roommate in the bottom bunk of our dorm room, I wept for hours at a time. I cried until I felt like I would crack, until my cheeks chafed from the tears that ran over them. I pushed my friends away, I didn't eat, I didn't go to class. I felt like I had lost everything, that I had been snatched up and away from my home and forced to learn to exist on an alien planet where we couldn't love each other anymore.

It took months before I could say his name without feeling a flare of hurt inside of me, and it tooks years before I could honestly wish him well and hope that his life was alright without me in it (before that, I wanted him to hurt as deeply as I did). It's been similar with each boy that has broken my heart.

You cry. You rage. You throw the biggest pity party of your life. You eat what feels like your weight in icecream and you drown yourself in margaritas or shots (or hot chocolate if you're like me circa winter of 2007). You talk about all the shitty things he did to you and you call him names. You get pissed off when your friends start calling him names (because they didn't really know him at all and WHY ARE YOU DEFENSIVE OF THIS GUY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU). You stop listening to your favorite songs because they remind you of that one night you kissed. You miss the feel of his hands on you. You get angry at yourself for missing the feel of his hands on you. You wake up in tears and wonder how your brain could possibly still remember the exact feel of his hands on you.

You dream about him. You have dreams where you relive the end of your relationship. There are dreams where he dies and you are happy. There are dreams where he dies and you are devastated. There are dreams of the future you could've had, with blurry faces of children you can't remember the names of.

You spend every minute reliving every moment that you'd spent together, wondering where you'd gone wrong and what you could've done differently to save you, to save him, to save the collective You that the both of you had combined to be.

The worst part is the loneliness. You have to still your hand every time you reach for your phone. There is no texting, no phone calls, no Twitter replies or e-mails. It is too soon, and you know it, but that doesn't keep you from feeling that pull back to him, the inexorable force the leaves you scraping your nails in the dirt as you try to keep yourself from being dragged back to him. Suddenly, you feel the complete absence of touch from your life, and you wonder if you'll ever feel warm arms wrapped around your body again, or long fingers intertwined with yours, or the pressure of someone's leg against your own. You feel like you are encased in a bubble and you can hardly breathe, thoroughly separated from everyone you love and thinking that any minute you will suffocate and that will be it.

Nobody ever knows how long it lasts. Some people are still feeling the ache years down the line. Some never recover, and have to adjust to their new life as someone who is convinced they are damaged or broken or less than they were before love died in their hearts.

But some of us will find ourselves in a quiet moment, and we are startled with the knowledge that we are fine. We are strong and capable and we will love again, and suddenly we can listen to those damned songs again without tearing up, and we find the strength to put down that bowl of icecream we'd been using to fill the hole inside of us. We remember how to laugh and we understand that we no longer need to push people away and we're able to go out and have fun without feeling bitterness and resentment building in our chests. There is no more fear of being alone, and we realize that we like ourselves and that maybe we are better off without him, and we're able to really remember all the reasons we wouldn't have worked anyway. The calm of this fills us.

And maybe someday, we'll find ourselves in love again. And maybe that love will go up in another burst of phoenix flames, but even if it does we know we can pull ourselves from the ashes of its demise and start again. Love and loss, love and loss. That is what life is filled with. This is what we know.

And if, someday, we find ourselves locked into a relationship with someone that fills us so perfectly, that we could live without but choose not to, someone that we want to share the rest of our lives with -- and it turns out that they want us, too -- then all the better, because we can compare this new, thriving love with the one that wilted and stung us.

I'm a firm believer in learning from your past mistakes, and that every relationship that ends is making way for a better one in your future, and that anyone who would leave you doesn't deserve you, and that we are all great people existing on different planes and not everyone will be on the same level as you. I'm a firm believer in being okay by yourself first, and that people can tell when you are desperate for companionship because you are afraid of being alone and they will take advantage of that.

I know that Real Love exists, and I have concrete examples in my life of people who have amazing relationships that fill me with envy for how well these two individuals work together. But I know that to settle for something less than what will make us happy, to tie ourselves to somebody that will not encourage the best from us, is a discredit to not only ourselves but to them. And I'd rather be alone and learning more about my own life than stuck in a relationship with someone that does not (or cannot) understand me, give me what I need, and make me want good things for them in return.

TL;DR, sorry.