No cat can have it all

We all want to feel seen. Seen, known, understood. So I would say I’ve become a seer. In my empathy driven brain and trained in the art of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, I’ve become almost everything I would want for myself in another. I remembered, I noticed, I cared. Turns out people are not all the same. It was quite the disappointment to me and I admit I am not the biggest fan of people not being like me in terms of their empathy levels. Or, more accurately and objectively put, I have become tired of being the only empath in most rooms. Especially when those rooms are filled with friends or family. I have grown tired of people seeing me in ways different from how I see myself, and I wonder if that’s because I am not showing myself fully or accurately or they’re not observant enough in the ways that matter. The answer is probably a combination of both. But I unfortunately catch myself being more and more bitter towards more and more people who don’t seem to grasp the changes I go through and the mourning that accompanies them. “I wish you could hear me and see me” - I find myself saying in different conversations and being met with a defensive response. I wish they could get me - I end up telling myself as I go home from yet another disappointing encounter. And I’ve been avoiding bitterness my entire life. I’ve fought through every envy and every Why couldn’t it be me? and every comparison as valiantly as I could. But after one too many battles, the remains are bitter. And I find myself wishing I could be understood in my bitterness, accepted in my new form, cared for in my woundedness, but not fixed, for sometimes you have to let the thorns grow alongside the flower and go carefully about it. But instead I’m being pruned at every turn, always diverted back to who and how I was, with a painful combination of both surprise and disdain. 

Healing the people-pleaser is hard work. Mostly because, like it often is the case, the antidote is made from the venom, and healing the people-pleaser tastes as bitter as selfishness. I am loved, it’s true. But am I known? Am I seen? And as I turn into someone very different from who I was, will I still be loved? Will I manage to make myself more seen? More known? As I leave the home I’ve known all my life, will I find another? Will I find a place I belong to? 

I’ve often thought about how no cat can have it all. I look at my baby "lynx" and how she chases birds through the net of my kitchen window (put there to protect her from jumping out and getting killed or lost) and wonder if she would prefer to be out in nature rather than home with me. But outside she would have probably died already, from one of the hundreds of things that could kill a cat in the city and inside with me she has care, food, heat and affection. And she seems to love all those things. But the lynx gene in her still wishes she could chase after birds and jump up trees. And I also observe the cats in the parks and cafes, out in nature, scrapping for food, letting themselves be petted by strangers. They also long for a home, but at the same time run away whenever someone tries to hold them. So no cat has it all. Just like me, they want their freedom and some comfort too, and choosing either one leaves them with less of the other.

34 and back at it.

This one’s for the good new days ahead. 

I was never a big fan of Michael Bublé's Feeling good song but I had it played at my birthday. “It’s a new life and I’m feeling good” is the part I’m not particularly fond of. It’s my same life. It’s the same life that makes me “both happy and sad and still trying to figure out how that could be” (Stephen Chbosky). This is still the quote that sums me best. This is the same life that surprised me with regret when I least expected it and the same life that made me a person I didn’t write in my journal when I was 13. It’s the same life that sometimes feels too much and others feels too small and the same life I’m still building alongside the fantasies in my head (who most often than not disagree with it). It’s my same first and singular life, to which I am at times a stranger, a visitor or a homemaker, slowly refining, diligently carving, hopefully waiting for those good new days, so that maybe this time around I get to savor them as they happen, before they become the good old days. 

 Birds flying high, wouldn’t it be nice if you knew how I feel? 

34 doesn’t really have any ring to it and I never quite liked even numbers. I was always the odd number girl. 15.7. Odd numbers, odd mind, odd life. I wore red nails to my MRI appointment on my birthday. Odd. I think having an MRI on my birthday is fitting to who I am and I actually enjoyed it. Also odd. I’m starting to think I’m like those rooms in which you start adding little trinkets and treasures and souvenirs and memories and books and posters and in the end it looks a mess and it seems nothing fits even though you know every little piece and where you collected it from, but they only make sense to you. I created my own niche and it only makes sense to me. I can show you around though. And maybe I’ll even keep a piece of you in this room, like all the other little pieces I collected. When I started building the room I didn’t know it would work as an airbnb of the soul. But guests came, stayed a while, left a little souvenir, a recipe in the kitchen, a song in the playlist, a movie that changed them, and went about their way. Now when you visit, you step into their traces. You step into a collection of things they left behind, some you like, some you don’t. Some I wish I never got, but I still don’t throw them away, because they were once part of me and I keep them stored away in the peculiar gallery of my life. Some days I revisit them, hopeful I now might have a little more wisdom about them, some days I let out a good cry while visiting and then go about my day. 34 has no ring to it. So there’s no pressure on it either. It’s not the kind of age I expect anything from. So I’m taking it as a break. I’m taking it as time to both undo and become, to remember and figure out. 34 might be an even number, but my life is still as odd as it ever was.