Coming home to something you were used to seeing, only to realize it isn’t there anymore, isn’t for the weak. I feel nothing but sorry for those who have lost pets they had for a long time. Sometimes, pets provide emotional support. Maybe someone who never had friends to talk to had their pets to vent to, and then one day, that presence that mattered to them more than anything left them forever. That emptiness still haunts me and will haunt me forever. I wish I never knew the feeling of coming home, not being able to feel the presence of my kitten, and knowing that I won’t ever see her again. I never understood how much comfort her presence gave me until I had to live with her absence.
Staring at the spots she used to hang around and not seeing her look back at me has me ugly crying each time. With smudged mascara running down my face, I gather the things left behind from the last day of her life on Earth. Having to make eye contact with her belongings kept tearing pieces and pieces of my heart away. Until I felt nothing.
I think when you grieve too much, your brain goes numb to protect you, and that’s all I needed: protection from attachment. If attachment is what made her presence so comforting, then why does losing her make the same attachment hurt so badly? Life isn’t just about breathing and jumping around. To make it matter, you have to get attached to something and feel pain so that you can value having fun. That’s what I kept repeating to myself to boost my mood.
When I first got her, there was a ChatGPT chat specifically named Maltesers. It was where I just kept endlessly yapping about her, from her first time walking to her last meal with me. Now, that chat remains, but with no purpose except as a reason to cry. I thought I had got over her passing, but my eyes say otherwise. It’s like there’s an internal war going on between my feelings and my mind. One wants to completely move on and forget, whereas the other still has hope that she’s not completely gone. Trying to fill the gap she left me with is really challenging. Nothing can compare to my love for her. Maybe moving forward doesn’t have to mean leaving her behind.
I thought losing something meant eventually forgetting it. Now I know that forgetting is a dream I can never walk on. Life is short. If you had one million, five thousand and two dollars and had 90 dollars stolen, would you be upset and give away the rest of the money you have?