Sep
24
About halfway through my rehab stay I absentmindedly grabbed a hot curling iron by the wrong end. The pain was instantaneous and all-encompassing, and was followed by a wave of self-hatred so fierce I leaned against the bathroom counter for support. You fuckup, I thought. You utter and complete piece of shit. You worthless loser. My hand throbbed and I just stood there looking at the reddening skin feeling like something had come loose inside of me. Some protective seal, ruptured. See what you get? See what you get?
I picked up my six-month chip recently. I have a little pile of them now: 24 hours, the Serenity Lane graduation coin, outpatient graduation, aluminum months differentiated by number and color. I don’t feel the way I used to, so raw and ashamed and loathsome. Every day I take another step, small movements but they add up.
Things are different, better, but the terrain is new and my confidence has been rebooted from scratch. My sponsor gave me a magnet that reads, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone,” which I kept for a few weeks before I decided that I didn’t like the idea of viewing my own comfort as a failure so I threw it away. Then I dug it back out of the trash because maybe the preachy magnet is right. Or maybe that’s just, like, the magnet’s opinion, man. I have no certainty about these things.
All I do know is that I have to keep walking towards forgiving and accepting myself. For all that I’ve done, for all that I am. I guess there’s no real finish line for this, just the hope that I’m going in the right direction.
Sep
21
When we still had all the kittens, Tiny Cat started bringing them food she’d scavenged outside, presumably from the neighbors’ garbage. First there was a breaded piece of fish, another time it was a whole raw chicken breast. Once she showed up with an Egg McMuffin, plasticky-cheese-coated wrapper and all.
Then came the snakes. Very small snakes, as if she’d specifically chosen the most tender reptiles for her children.
Nobody was particularly interested in these offerings. Even the kittens, after curiously batting the corpse for a minute or two, would just sit there like, “Uhhhh. Nope.”
I figured that once the kittens were gone, TC would no longer feel the need to provide extra nourishment and her snake-hunting days would come to an end. Buuuuuuuut ….
No, now they’re just BIGGER snakes.
Also no longer dead.
Basically at least once every couple weeks there’s a snake in the sunroom, which is at least not technically inside the house but STILL. The smaller ones I could pick up and dispose of, but these larger still-moving ones require Husband Assistance. Which makes the whole thing pretty entertaining, because while JB would like me to tell you he’s like Samuel L. when it comes to snakes ….
He’s really more like Indiana Jones.
While I do not enjoy finding reptiles in places that should not contain reptiles, I have to admit I’m impressed by TC. She’s just trying to be a good mama, and if her efforts occasionally go wholly unappreciated — well, who among us can’t identify?
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