No, I am not a cat lady. I tried that, but that’s another story. I didn’t immediately pay to have HAPPY forever, but on a trial basis. I’d love her name and face on Facebook. I’d been allergic to cats in my youth. I wanted to try it out. After a few days with Happy in December 2022, I realized my home was no longer my home. My routine was no longer my choice. The day I drove Happy back to the person responsible for finding her the perfect home (2 Hour drive to Palm Desert, TYVM) she left a tattoo on the left side two inches above my left ankle, which now thankfully is very faint, only I notice it and know what it is.
The past month there is a cat in heat somewhere very near my vicinity. I’ve been getting up and doing my A meditation on the computer between 3-7. I do not hear her now at 10:18. I slept in this morning. Yesterday when taking out the trash at 1 PM I heard her and tried to mimic her moan. She didn’t come running from where ever she was.
But this is not a story about cats. I did cat-sit for my ex-boyfriend’s mom’s three cats for a while in the late 80s and early 90s. I knew after a month with him, I was okay he was leaving to go to Florida to pursue his music. But four months later he was back saying he couldn’t live without me. Huh? I lived with him for four years because I loved his mom so much.
We are still very close even though our politics are completely opposite. She is now 91. She lost her beloved (2nd husband, not a cat) a month before my experience with my cat for a month, Happy. A medical mistake took him from her. Her first marriage and childhood were not happy, or healthy. Her beloved cherished her. EVERYTHING about her; decisions, foresight, preferences, and worked day and night to enact her vision of the two houses they lived in from late 80s to 2022. Her garden blooms, now, with all he made sure that delighted her.
She was supposed to call me back a few days ago, five minutes after I called her. I took it personally. I thought she was mad at me so I didn’t call her back. She called this morning. She has known me since late 1987. For decades we sent each other birthday gifts. Our conversation was deep. We’ve decided to talk every Wednesday at 7:30 PM. I will call and she will put it on her calendar and wait by the phone tonight and throughout the end of the year.
She told me to stop beating myself up, the past is the past. I mentioned the month I left her son and went back east to be a leased guest in girlfriend’s girlfriend’s girlfriend’s apartments and hearts. Important professional women. Women that created exactly the lives they wanted. I have a tendency to compare myself to others. The night I won all the awards in 1978 I asked my mom if she would still love me when I was no longer winning awards. She compared me to someone else’s achievements.
I was a president from the age of 15, until the age of 22, voted in by my peers. I decided then I would never join again, never put myself into that point of high pressure/demanding stress/externally motivated place again. I was born an introvert, shamed out of it, and it took me twenty full years to reclaim that birth right.
YET, I feel responsible for the bs we are living through these days, politically. If I had been there all those years, it wouldn’t be this way, but I wouldn’t be here anymore either. That pressure and stress would have done me in long ago.
At the age of 21, when interning on Capitol Hill, I knew after three weeks that you had to sell your soul to get anything done in politics. I wasn’t willing to sell my soul to anyone.
My friend, my ex-boyfriend’s mom, is still grieving her loss. I asked if it was wrong of me not to need or perhaps want a full-time live-in relationship. She couldn’t answer because she’d not lived alone, except in between the first bad marriage until the second good one, but she had two sons with her under her tutelage during that time.
When we put everything into another, when we lose them, we lose such a huge part of ourselves. She was desperate, feeling the loss, day in and out the cleaving presence of his absence. She had told me I needed to leave the past in the past, to move forward into the future. We will both do that every Wednesday going forward.
Why did I title this PREZ? I knew I could never be what anyone else wanted me or needed me to be. I had to be exactly who I am. I’ve learned exactly who I am. I’ve studied the esoteric and taboo, as well as endured long enough dealing with all the subjects I hate but are necessary in modern life. I know why I’m here. I know what my skills and gifts are.
I always wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be an actress, but my dad said I could never made money as an actress. Anything I really wanted to be he told me the same line, about how I couldn’t rely on that skill to make money. All I COULD DO TO MAKE MONEY, I didn’t value or enjoy. I think that’s f’d. So I set my own path.
I’ve learned not to need much because what I really want is free.
I learned early on when I wanted something, by the time I finally got it, I wanted something else. Now I trust Spirit to bring me what I want and need and it’s a delicious, divine reciprocation that I enjoy breathing through, day in, and day out.
My little brother set me on this path. He said I could have exactly the life I really wanted and to ponder such a fact deeply. I listened to him. I still do.
This is lovely! How beautifully you honour your relationship with your little brother. I also love the weekly Wednesday ritual; you seek and offer strength in a friendship that transcends the barriers of the past.
And, finally, a reminder to every writer—that the thing that we really want is free of cost. (Although it may exact other tolls on us!)
Love this "My little brother set me on this path. He said I could have exactly the life I really wanted and to ponder such a fact deeply. I listened to him. I still do."