escape artist

“Suzanne is forty years old and has nev­er had a close rela­tion­ship. She spends most of her spare time read­ing books and brows­ing the web. Suzanne is most com­fort­able with casu­al, friend­ly rela­tion­ships where noth­ing very per­son­al is dis­cussed.

Suzanne is mar­ried to a man who is out of touch with his feel­ings. He’s more inter­est­ed in being mar­ried than in being mar­ried to Suzanne par­tic­u­lar­ly. He has few friends, and does not expect close­ness from Suzanne. He wants a woman just so he can ful­fill the con­ven­tion­al role of hus­band. Their rela­tion­ship is based on tra­di­tion­al roles, not on real inti­ma­cy. They rarely con­fide in each oth­er.

Suzanne has smoked mar­i­jua­na her entire adult life. She insists that she is not addict­ed — she tells her­self she only does it for recre­ation, and that she has con­trol. Besides using drugs on a reg­u­lar basis, she tends to drink in set­tings when she does­n’t feel as social­ly capa­ble as oth­ers.

Suzanne became depressed, but was not in touch with her feel­ings of aban­don­ment and defec­tive­ness. She spent much of her life mak­ing sure she was not in touch, and try­ing to escape her feel­ings.

Continue read­ing “escape artist”…

consider this place

It’s get­ting hard­er to write.

Not that the spir­it is unwill­ing, although that was the case for years, when the things I need­ed to talk about most were the exact things I need­ed dis­tance from. At this point, the flesh isn’t even that weak1, but a lack of cer­tain­ty in which to ground my per­spec­tives has become an obsta­cle. The biggest sign I’m get­ting old­er isn’t the white hair in my mous­tache, but the recog­ni­tion that I’ve shed some youth­ful arro­gance that used to feel like wis­dom.

FTL: Faster Than Light decision

Do I let fate reward my brav­ery with an extra crew mem­ber, or give it the chance to fuck me over by killing one? Or do I avoid the choice com­plete­ly?

It’s eas­i­er for me to accept a bad out­come if I remem­ber that every deci­sion is made with the best inten­tions, and the only goal is sur­vival.

HBO shows2 and games with con­se­quen­tial choic­es based on ran­dom­ized events3 have been a huge influ­ence on my think­ing. Media with mosaics of moral­i­ty, while char­ac­ters grow and evolve across sev­er­al spec­trums (along with my opin­ion of them). Where deci­sions have to be care­ful­ly made with lim­it­ed infor­ma­tion and resources, then bal­anced against com­pet­ing inter­ests from for­eign spheres of influ­ence. Situations where a per­son can make all the right moves, and still fail through cir­cum­stance.

Continue read­ing “con­sid­er this place”…

  1. Thanks to a remis­sion in col­i­tis, and con­sis­tent use of a SAD lamp. [↩]
  2. Game of Thrones, Six Feet Under [↩]
  3. Europa Universalis 4, FTL: Faster Than Light, Moirai [↩]

eight lives left

A lit­tle while ago, Byron stopped hold­ing down his meals, and we’d con­sis­tent­ly find chick­en parts scat­tered about the house short­ly after he ate. A vis­it to the vet, along with the usu­al blood tests, came up emp­ty. It was only an x‑ray at the ER that showed a small object lodged at the start of his small intes­tine, block­ing the path of diges­tion.

It did­n’t come as a huge sur­prise. Byron was a relent­less cat when it came to search­ing for food. I could­n’t tell if he’d roam the house for things to eat cause he was hun­gry, or if his hunger came from the con­stant roam­ing. Sometimes we’d find chewed up toys passed through his sys­tem, but more often than not they came up the oth­er end, cov­ered in bile. It was only a mat­ter of time before some­thing got stuck.

cat in cone

The face of a killer defeat­ed by a fur­ni­ture screw.

I try to have a prag­mat­ic view about my cats. Operations of this scale on any sin­gle one are hard for me to jus­ti­fy, when I could use those resources to save sev­er­al more (espe­cial­ly when I would­n’t love a new cat any less). So I left the deci­sion up to Heather, con­sid­er­ing the fact that she’s the bread­win­ner now, and she’s had a stronger con­nec­tion to him ever since she start­ed tak­ing care of the cat’s meals.

It was­n’t a dif­fi­cult choice for her, and she gave the vet approval to oper­ate with­out a sec­ond thought.

Cat at Wintersday

Heather’s spent more hours as his ranger alter-ego, Byron Tightslasher, than any oth­er char­ac­ter. Every detail of his vir­tu­al per­sona is care­ful­ly cho­sen to mim­ic Byron in real life, from the pat­terns of his fur, to the tilt of his muz­zle. In keep­ing with his per­son­al­i­ty, even the ranger pets that fol­low him are named after foods, such as his juve­nile eagle called Drumsticks.

This Christmas, Byron’s “Santa Claws” per­sona includes a snow­fall aura, Wintersday weapon set, wreath back­pack, and Ho-Ho-Tron mini with match­ing san­ta hat.

After leav­ing Leonard at the hos­pi­tal for an emer­gency oper­a­tion, then find­ing out the next day that he was gone, I was ter­ri­fied that I’d nev­er see Byron again, but he soon came home with a new col­lar and a shaven bel­ly, weak from not hav­ing digest­ed a prop­er meal in so long.

It’s been a few months since, and he’s rebound­ed quite well, though a lot more cau­tious when it comes to the things he decides to put in his mouth. I sus­pect he’s learned a very painful les­son about not eat­ing some­thing just because he can, which means by now he’s at least smarter than most pup­pies.

shaved belly

BELLY NEEDS BOOPING

I could tell Heather loved my kit­ties, cause she obsess­es over their health, projects their per­son­al­i­ties onto oth­er ani­mals, and talks about them cease­less­ly (whether it’s to me or peo­ple she just met). She even role-plays as them in Guild Wars 2, her favourite part of every sea­son being the chance cre­ate a new cos­tume. But after see­ing the how much effort she put into sav­ing my lit­tle boy, then nurs­ing him back to health with del­i­cate patience, I’ve start­ed to under­stand that love goes deep­er than I real­ized, for both them and me.

backstory

It’s tak­en me a gen­er­ous dis­tance, as well as a healthy break from the pain, to real­ize I don’t under­stand what my mom thought of me. In my ear­li­est years, I believed she loved me, cause none of her demands were unrea­son­able. After all, chil­dren are often help­less and don’t even know what’s best for them­selves. Then I grew up, and devel­oped an iden­ti­ty of my own. That meant I had dis­tinc­tive needs sep­a­rate from hers, and she would deny every one of them unless they were in line with what she want­ed. It was impos­si­ble for me to believe there was any love at all when she was the cause of so much of my pain. I’ve since come to real­ize that rela­tion­ships are full of nuances, and that it’s pos­si­ble to love some­one whole­heart­ed­ly and be ter­ri­ble for them at the same time.

Continue read­ing “back­sto­ry”…

facing eternity, or the lack thereof

Heather man­aged to snag a job at a great com­pa­ny on the oth­er side of town. She start­ed her train­ing last month, and I could­n’t be more proud of her for mak­ing the cut after months of resumes and appli­ca­tions, hope and patience.

While it makes sense for her to start work­ing, I’ve been forced to deal with an unset­tling void in the house — like the deaf­en­ing silence of a black­out, when the elec­tron­ic hums and glows cease to pro­vide their per­pet­u­al com­pa­ny. We nev­er spent more than an hour apart before this, when she might have stepped out to grab some gro­ceries or a pre­scrip­tion1; near­ly two years where we could­n’t help but be close­ly in tune with each oth­er’s needs and moods. Now, it feels like we bare­ly have a chance to get our dailies with a bit of extra con­tent before it’s time for bed.

Cadem Forest in Plains of Ashford

I always trav­el with my menagerie of cats; this month with Zuzu, Cat of Darkness at my feet (in cel­e­bra­tion of Halloween) and Brill on my back (who’s actu­al­ly a tiger cub).

Losing so much of each oth­er has been a dif­fi­cult adjust­ment. I was­n’t ready for this. It was­n’t a deci­sion I made. I’m not use to being so alone, or even tak­ing care of myself, for that mat­ter2. When she’s away, the void makes it painful­ly clear how much I sur­round­ed myself with her. I can’t even write with­out men­tion­ing her, cause there’s rarely a deci­sion I make with­out con­sid­er­ing her first, whether it’s how we’re going to spend our time or what I’m going to say next.

It’s a dif­fi­cult reminder of many years spent with­out a part­ner or par­ent to rely on. I’ve been try­ing to reclaim my inde­pen­dence by pick­ing up small respon­si­bil­i­ties. Something as sim­ple as mak­ing my space more com­fort­able, whether it’s a thor­ough clean­ing or new light­ing arrange­ment, turns into a chance to suc­ceed and feel accom­plished. Even games become lit­tle projects, ways of exer­cis­ing my cre­ativ­i­ty or keep­ing myself sharp.

I knew Heather would even­tu­al­ly be work­ing, and I’d be alone. Now the day has come, and I’m con­stant­ly won­der­ing: who am I when I’m by myself? What do I do to fill the hours that she’s away?

At least it’s giv­en me a chance to write again. The break has­n’t been entire­ly inten­tion­al. Part of it is the fact that writ­ing takes ener­gy, and I rarely have any to spare when I’m try­ing so hard just to feel okay. Another part is the fact that I haven’t need­ed this in the same way since I met her. She’s become an impor­tant out­let, one who always makes her­self avail­able to me. There has­n’t been the same long­ing to write, cause I haven’t need­ed to vent, or sort out my thoughts, or feel val­i­dat­ed.

Nevertheless, this peri­od of empti­ness has become a chap­ter in itself. A change that will be a great deal of the rest of our lives. I’m stuck here, while the days stretch out before me with end­less pos­si­bil­i­ty. The hard part is final­ly stum­bling into the life I’ve always want­ed, find­ing a part­ner who fills in my gaps in all the right ways, but not being ready for it all.

  1. Aside from a few days she spent vis­it­ing her fam­i­ly last year. It was the first sig­nif­i­cant amount of time we were away from each oth­er since we met, and I had a pan­ic attack before she was out of the city. [↩]
  2. She still han­dles the meals, and has a sys­tem where most things are done in the slow cook­er; all I need to do is pour the con­tents of a bag into the pot and turn it on at a cer­tain time, although, some days, even this can slip my mind. [↩]