Absnasm

Fuck’s sake.

Christmas is coming and it looks like I might be having it here with GG, rather than face the terror of going to his parents’ or the hassle of going to mine. But there’s no way I can cook a Christmas dinner in the small grill/oven on top of the main one. It’s too shallow, the Yorkshires would stick to the roof, or they would if they rise like they’re supposed to.

I might wind up getting my oven fixed as a Christmas present from my parents, which is possibly the lamest gift ever. Even lamer than last year, when my dad serviced my car and bought me two new tyres. Poverty-driven essentials for Christmas, hooray!

I am feeling really lonely this weekend. I am afraid I am losing the ability to relate to people. I don’t seem to be able to have conversations in a normal way – it’s like my cueing is off or something, we just seem to interrupt each other and I feel like I can’t connect. I have little to say to other people. I don’t know how to relate to women, especially. My experiences with female friends have often been very sour. And while HA has been a very close friend to me since our split, he is very much slipping away from me now as he is absorbed into his new life in London. That is fair enough, we have split up, but it still hurts a lot.

I’ve met a few women that I’d quite like to be friends with. But how do you do that when you’re unlikely to meet them repeatedly and organically create a friendship? You can’t exactly ask them on a date.

I sometimes feel like I’m inflicting myself on others rather than being able to comprehend that they might want to spend time with me. Being cut off by my former friends has damaged me pretty badly. I have little faith in myself as a likeable person right now. I’ve been rejected for being who I am and having (and showing) the feelings that I do. And it happened at the most vulnerable time of my life, while I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, in the middle of my long-term relationship collapsing and my one chance at parenthood being snatched away from me. I have always accepted my friends and loved them unconditionally, with all their feelings and faults and behaviours with which I felt uncomfortable. Why was I not extended the same courtesy?

It seems easier just to be alone than to put myself through the potential pain of rejection again. I do OK on my own most of the time. I have friends that live in other towns, I can call them whenever I want. And I have my boyfriend, of course, he is ace (though he’s away this weekend). But I don’t think it’s fair for either of us for me to be dependent on him for company. Sometimes I really wish I had a friend that I could just hang out with, nice and easy, on a Sunday afternoon.

Askit has been losing weight for a while, and more recently started weeing and pooing where he’s not supposed to – on the bed, on the sofa. I thought it was stress from missing HA – they were very close – and from being left alone while I was at work or staying at the cat-allergic GG’s. So last Tuesday I took him to the vet to see if there was anything I could do to soothe him. Perhaps Feliway, or a cat behaviourist.

But she was concerned with his weight loss and took blood tests. That evening she called me to say that his kidneys were failing, and she recommended euthenasia as soon as possible, before he got really ill.

I was in shock. I took the next afternoon off work to spend time with him. He sat on my knee and was fed bowl after bowl of milk. I took lots of photos and videos, let my friends and family know, and Skyped HA to break the news and let him say goodbye to Askit. He was, in many ways, HA’s cat.

On Thursday morning GG and I took Askit to the vet, and I held him while she put him to sleep, painlessly and gently. I cried my eyes out, as did GG. In many ways it felt wrong, because he didn’t really seem ill at all, just old and creaky, but I know that he would have soon been in pain – kidney failure is a horrible way to go. But once his little heart had stopped beating, he suddenly looked better, more healthy and kittenish than he has in a long time. I know I did the right thing.

I feel quite numb, to be honest. It hasn’t sunk in at all. The flat seems much stiller and quieter than I expected it to be – he was only 2.7kg at his death but his personality took up a lot of room, more room than I thought. I keep forgetting that he’s gone, and doing the things you do when you have a cat, like making sure certain doors are shut or open, or that food is covered to protect it from curious and spiny tongues.

I haven’t really cried much since we left the vet. I’ve been cracking black jokes about it because I don’t know how else to handle it. I’ve been exhausted and in bed all weekend, which I guess is my brain processing it. I wish I could just catch up and feel the grief instead of this emptiness. I know it’ll come. I miss him a lot.

This is the last photo ever taken of him, just minutes before he was put to sleep. You can see just how frail he looked, and kind of disgusting, but still utterly lovable with his beautiful green eyes.

RIP Askit, you lazy, loving, noisy, stinky, tough old pirate cat. I hope you and your brother Baloo are frolicking together now in fields of celestial catnip.