The Appeal of the Dollhouse

Last night I decided that I would rewatch Dollhouse. The first time I went through the series I whizzed through it, so my memory of some episodes is hazy. I know I loved it, so I want to recapture the feelings I had the first time around. Watching the first episode, I was struck immediately by why I was so drawn to the character of Echo in the first place, and why the setting of the Dollhouse always makes me feel transported from my own life. (note: there will be spoilers here)

At the end of episode one, Alpha is sitting in a house watching a yearbook video of Caroline before she becomes Echo. In the video she says that she “just wants to do everything”. There’s an interesting juxtaposition between her youthful joy at the possibilities of life and the shots of her as a doll after a day of doing things no one else could imagine, empty and numb. I suspect that this is supposed to be creepy and unsettling for viewers, but I have to be honest: to me it is simply appealing.

Because that’s the secret of the Dollhouse: even though you are no one, you get to do everything. You get to be everyone. You get to have every dream you could imagine. Even better, you get to be perfect at all of them. You are created to be ideal and if you aren’t ideal, it isn’t your fault. All responsibility for your failures is lifted from you.

Of course this comes at a cost: the loss of your own self. For many, that’s the terror of the Dollhouse, the dystopian element. But there is another way to see this. Echo’s mind is quiet. At no point do her thoughts roil and catch, never is she troubled by things left undone, but she is not stupid: many times she is smarter than anyone else in the Dollhouse. She has adventure in her life, amazing adventures, overwhelming adventures, but she is never left with the aftermath. Is peace too high a cost for the loss of self?

Something about these two elements of Dollhouse speak to what I see as the collective consciousness of Millenials: an intense drive for perfection, accomplishment, and activity, coupled with an expectation of constantly being “on”. Nearly everyone I know who’s my age has intensely high expectations of themselves: they want to do something that no one else can do. They desperately want to be needed. And many of them have passions ranging across the board, from theater to science to crocheting and they want to be the BEST at each of these things.

Of course this is impossible. Unless you’re a doll. Unless you can be someone else each day. Unless you can emerge two years later and know that you accomplished impossible things, even if it wasn’t you. Something about this power is intensely appealing.

The flip side of this is that Millenials know the cost of perfection: hours of anxiety, work, self-hatred, low self-esteem. You constantly beat up on yourself in an attempt to be better. Harsh self-criticism. Our brains do not leave us alone. They do not shut up. They have been filled with the message to “be all you can be” and if you spend any second of your life not doing that, you’re not living up to expectations. Imagine how quiet it would be to save the world and come home to an empty head, to trust those around you to take care of you, to have no questions and worries about how you performed or what you should be doing tomorrow. Imagine the zen of simply being without a single thought.

Imagine the beauty of a world where you can accomplish all of that without the cost.

Many main characters in movies are considered idealized versions of what people wish they could have, superheroes in particular. We see people who are strong, who are intelligent, who have lots of money-these are the things we want. Echo is the superhero of this generation: she can become anything and do everything, but has peace at night.

At first glance, the world of the Dollhouse looks egregious. But the draw of it is that many elements of it are exactly what we want. The realization of this ambiguity of the Dollhouse is what I love about the show, but also says something about the struggles that we face at this moment in time. This kind of hero is very different from the muscle man or the detective of the past, and illustrates what kind of strength we feel we need right now.

Art reflects life. What can we learn of life from this reflection?

Being the Wet Blanket

Feminists are often accused of having no sense of humor, of having a stick up their asses, or of being curmudgeons. And I’m going to be honest: many times I feel like I am the wet blanket. I can’t enjoy many of the movies and TV shows that I used to because I notice how screwed up they are, I feel uncomfortable around many people because of the ways in which they joke or the words that they throw around, and I often have to tell people that they really aren’t as witty and charming as they thought they were, they are in fact just being oppressive assholes. It’s not fun to have to take on this role. It’s not fun to have to “ruin” people’s fun. I often find myself feeling guilty or wondering if I’m oversensitive or too delicate in my sensibilities. But there are some good reasons to continue being the wet blanket, and perhaps these reasons can keep you going through the times you feel like everyone hates you for speaking up.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember in “wet blanket” situations is that you are not in fact ruining anyone’s fun. Their fun has already been ruined by the fact that it’s come at the expense of someone else. If you were to walk up to a bully punching a smaller child and stop them from hurting that child, you wouldn’t feel guilty for ruining their fun: you would know that their fun was inappropriate to begin with. You are doing the same thing when you call someone out for sexism, racism, or other oppressive behaviors. Those behaviors just as actively hurt people as the bully physically beating someone. They hurt people through the violent norms they enforce, through rape culture, through the wage gap, through hate crimes…these are realities that are linked to the jokes and the casual conversations we have.

Many people also accuse feminists of being incapable of having fun, not just of ruining the fun of others. I’d like to propose a thought experiment to explore this claim. Let’s imagine we live in a society in which brutal torture was normal. It was even considered fun. People publicly tortured others to get kicks, and it was often viewed as a show: going out to the torture. Say you were an individual living in this society and you couldn’t bring yourself to enjoy any of this. You go out to the torture and you look at your friends and say “this is wrong! We’re hurting people!” They respond by asking why you can’t have any fun. Looking at a society like this, we would recognize that the person who is unhappy is actually perceiving the situation more accurately and with more empathy than the other individuals involved, and that most likely they could have fun if it were in a non-harmful way.

Now obviously this is hyperbolic. But as I mentioned before, many of the things that people view as fun, joking, or entertainment do in fact contribute directly to the harm of others. Perceiving this connection and being upset by it is not an indication that one has no sense of fun: rather it’s an indication that one has an active sense of empathy and a clear perception of the situation. I would bet that if you asked most feminists whether there things in life they enjoyed they would say yes. They’re just probably not the things you enjoy. I myself for example deeply enjoy My Little Pony, chocolate, swimming, and taiko drumming just to name a few. But I attempt to find things to like that don’t hurt others. Being upset by bad behavior is not an indication that you’re incapable of enjoying things. It’s an indication that there’s something wrong with the things people are asking you to enjoy.

People who are labelled as “wet blankets” are often those who perceive something that others don’t. As an example, we have some people at my work that want to do and try everything. We need our resident wet blanket to say “stop. Let’s think about what will happen if we do this”. In many cases this is about practicality, however it can also be about ethics and empathy. I want to be the person who asks others to stop and consider the implications of their actions because that person is the one who keeps our world running and functional. That person is necessary and improves things in the long term. They don’t necessarily want to stop what you’re doing, but they do want you to think it out first and make improvements to it. I have no problem with you writing that song, but I think it would be a much better song if it didn’t promote rape culture and I’ll tell you that.

But more than anything, when you feel you’re making a big deal out of nothing, remember that your emotions are valid. If you are upset or hurt by something, that is valid. And it is also valid to ask people to stop doing things that hurt or upset you, even if they don’t understand why. Particularly when you  know that others are hurt by something, you can feel confident that your discomfort is not out of line or irrational: it is necessary.

So yes, I will happily take the label of wet blanket if it means that I am making people more aware of their actions and the implications of their actions, if it means that I’m ending “fun” that is harmful and cruel, if it means that I’m standing up for my own needs and the needs of others. If that’s being a wet blanket and ruining your fun, then you’re doing fun the wrong way.

Hiding Behind Humor

In my family we have a joke. It originated when I was a teenager, bored on the weekend. I walked downstairs and my parents were creating a to-do list of tasks they needed to complete before Monday. Like any good teenager, I demanded that they pay attention to me. They jokingly said that it wasn’t on the list. I promptly picked up a pen and wrote at the top of the page “Priority #1: Entertain Olivia”. When they finished that list, I wrote up a post it note that said the same thing and stuck it to the fridge. There it remained for years, until we had to replace the fridge and took down all of the junk decorating our old one.

It was funny. Except when it wasn’t. Except for the times when boredom drove me into an anxiety so deep that I didn’t know what to do and legitimately contemplated smashing my head against the wall until I blacked out just so I could stop having my thoughts run in circles. Except for the times when I was alone and lost and couldn’t make myself leave the house because I just didn’t know what to do with myself and the hugeness of the world was too much and my mind was too full of angry thoughts that had appeared when there was nothing else to fill it up. It was funny though. It was precocious.

And somehow, deep in the recesses of consciousness, it was self-care. I knew what I needed and I was asking, demanding, begging that someone pay attention to what I knew I needed. And somewhere, my parents knew it too. There was an unspoken agreement that when possible, they would feed my desire for constant entertainment.

Now for the most part, this was just a joke. It didn’t have some large, existential meaning. But it revealed something about me. I really was seeking attention and for a legitimate reason. This isn’t the only time that the way someone has joked has revealed something about their mental state, or about what they need from others.  This is one of the reasons that I feel racist, sexist, and otherwise oppressive jokes are such a problem: all jokes contain a morsel of what the joker believes is truth.

There are two elements to this story that I find important in my own life. The first is that I’ve started paying more attention to how I joke. Perhaps if I had paid attention to it ten years ago I would have realized that I had some issues long before it turned into a life-threatening disease, and personally I think that would have been just peachy. When something comes up repeatedly in my life, I’m trying to take the time to stop and think about it. Oftentimes, these are jokes. Thinking back on my life, I’ve noticed other jokes that were telling: when I was younger I used to say that I wasn’t turning into my mother, I was my mother. Now I’m starting to see that as an unhealthy intertwining of identity. Hopefully I’ll notice my current jokes before they turn into problems.

Rarely have I heard anyone suggest that we should be mindful of the way we joke as a barometer of how we’re doing. However humor is often a way for us to say things that would otherwise be inappropriate without repercussions. More often than not, anything goes in comedy. Particularly sarcasm makes it easy for us to say what we truly mean without being taken seriously. I’m surprised that more people don’t look to the jokes that they make as a way to think about what’s going on beneath the surface of their thoughts, but I’d suggest we all spend a little more time thinking about it.

The second thing that I’ve noticed from this anecdote is that I now pay more attention to the jokes that other people make. Self-deprecating humor? That says something serious about a person’s self-esteem. Racist and sexist jokes? Aw hell no. I’ve started to hold people more responsible for what they say under the guise of humor, because everything we say has consequences and repercussions. I have begun to try to be thoughtful about the ways I respond to humor, even as simple as “Please don’t make fun of yourself, it makes me uncomfortable”. I’ve tried to simply be aware of what it means when someone makes the same joke over and over. I’m taking humor seriously now (which is not to say that I suddenly have lost my sense of humor, simply that I over analyze my sense of humor now. Hooray!).

I hope that more people can become aware of the ways that we use joking and humor to cover things up in our society. While it’s wonderful that we’ve had people like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin open up the world of comedy to some majorly free speech, there is a downside, which is that people often use comedy as an excuse to say anything. Since much of comedy relies on wordplay, it’s often a way to say things sideways without anyone truly noticing the impact of what you’re saying. Comedy is a good cover for the depths of your true beliefs. I suggest we make a concerted effort to bring humor into the realm of critical thought and stop giving it a free pass just because it’s funny. It could make a serious difference.

 

 

Food: I Love It

The following blog post is a personal challenge for me inspired by the following quote: ‘‘I love to cook so much . . . food represents to me something truly positive, fun and liberated, and sensual and loving . . . it feels to me like being in control, not in the . . .bad and neutralizing sense, but in the sense that I do not let external forces control me and tell me that I cannot eat.’’ In the spirit of this quote, I want to tell you what I love about food, and why I view eating as a radical feminist act.

 

Food is comforting. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but when you get home from a long day, all you want is something warm to put in your mouth. The sensation of chewing something with a good texture, of letting the flavors sink into your tongue, of feeling yourself heat up from the inside, is reaffirming: I am here. I am alive. I deserve this good thing. I can feel myself regaining strength when I eat food. I can feel my mood brightening. Food gives me life. It affirms to me that I should be in this world, not in a far-off intellectual space with no body. When I eat I feel solid.

And food. Food tastes AMAZING. A piece of really good chocolate, fruit, or ice cream? I could eat them all day, letting them melt on my tongue and sink into my consciousness, sweetening up my day. Or the deep, delicious savoriness of a pizza, which you can’t quite replicate anywhere else. Or simply the taste of MEAT. I’m sorry, but as a recovering anorexic, I cannot explain to you how perfect a hamburger is. And salt. Salt and vinegar potato chips, hash browns, FRIED FOOD. These things are delicious. I love the experience of eating them, of tasting them, of gobbling them down. And textures are stellar too. I had some pasta last week that was the perfect kind of chewy, and I just wanted to keep eating it forever so that I could have that texture in my mouth indefinitely. It makes my teeth almost hurt just thinking about it. Or ice cream on a sore throat. Food makes you feel good.

Food can completely change your experience of a day or a temperature. A hot drink on a cold day leaves you shivering as you feel the warmth reach out into your belly. Cold ice cream on a hot day makes everything suddenly ok. Food can define experiences.

Food is a mental game. You wait for it. You get excited while you cook. You see it and smell it before you can taste it and taste it before it’s really yours and in your belly. You can savor every little bit of it. You can build it up and appreciate the excitement of it all day. Cooking is an art and baking is a science and you can create and play and explore the world around you by changing it into something it wasn’t a few hours ago. It’s fairly amazing, and it reminds you how powerful we are. We can change our world in order to make it taste better. It’s a powerful form of creating culture by changing the natural materials we’re given. It makes us more human.

Food is an experience that is hard to replicate. Each meal is the coalescence of a place and people and culture and history, all come together to create what is now. Your food means different things at different times and in different places. It comes together through your culture, mediated by cultural symbols. Your food represents where you are coming from, but by definition it is where you are going because it is the sheer fuel that allows you to go there. Food is time, because what else is growth and maturation and ripeness and cooking and every other process by which our food becomes appropriate for us to eat? Food is all these connections. Perhaps the most beautiful of them is the community. Sitting down to a good meal with a pile of friends is one of the best experiences in life. Everything becomes a bit warmer, everyone a bit more vivacious, more talkative. We move closer to share, to ask about each other’s food. Sharing food is a sign of trust, of care, of closeness.

And food tells us what we deserve. It is something we take for ourselves, something we should never question whether we deserve or not because it is the most basic thing that everyone deserves. It tells us that we have the right to take up physical space, to interact with things and people, to speak, to be in space. Food is our right to a body, and tells us we have the right to exist in the same space as others.

Perhaps my favorite part of food is the memories that it creates. Whenever I want to imagine my childhood and the things that made me happy about it, I imagine eating spaghetti. When I think of my current relationship, I see it in the story of meals that we’ve eaten together. Certain people I remember in the scent of food. Certain foods can reduce me to tears or laughter with their memories. I love how human food is for this reason. I love remembering.

I love food for these reasons. It is hard for me to say that I love food, but I love the experiences of food. Food is not something you’re supposed to love. You’re supposed to eat it for sustenance and health, but not for your soul. Well I call bullshit on that. Food is intimate: it is one of so very few things we put into our bodies, and we are certainly discriminatory about our sexual partners: why shouldn’t we give the same care and attention to our food? I love my food because it represents so much of the beauty of being human, so many of the deeper experiences, because there is so much to question, explore, and learn about how we come to have the food that we do.

I tell myself this over and over because women who love food are Bad. They are out of control. They are self-centered. I tell myself this because I have made myself an imperative. Taking care of myself against the messages that I have gotten that others are more important, that work is more important, that accomplishing is more important, that I can rest when I’m dead, that my happiness is secondary to what I create and accomplish has become my revolution. I am my oppressed minority, and eating is our protests, eating is our bombs, eating is our artwork and songs and stories and essays. “Eating is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of radical “ Audre Lorde. This quote is our mantra. Every beautiful thing I recognize about food as I put it in my mouth is another blow to every message that says “be less”. When men tell women that they exist as objects, I choose to eat something and TAKE ANOTHER BEING into myself. Objectify that. When people call me crazy and say that psychos are just making it all up, I eat my dinner and reflect again on how impossible that was a year ago and know I am stronger than anyone who has never thought twice about their dinner.

My very existence as someone who is mentally ill and female is a struggle to claim as my own. My food is the last symbol that I can choose what to do with my life and my body. When I stop choosing purposively to eat, how to eat, what to eat, and when to eat, I give up the most basic level of control and self-assertion I have. Food is my revolution when I allow myself to take up space, when I refuse to give up on my potential, when I connect myself to my family, to my memories, to my stories, when I write my own narratives, when I deeply experience the world. Food makes me more human. It forces me to recognize my humanity, on par with anyone else’s, no better and no worse. I don’t believe in God, but I believe in the power of food to connect people to each other. I believe in how fantastic food is.

Fiction Round Up

It’s been a while since I’ve graced you all with anything other than essays (I sound so full of myself don’t I? Don’t worry, it’s all an act to hide the insecurities I feel about my writing), and so I figured that today would be a good day to put up the bits and pieces I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. Some are drabbles, some are poems, some are…God knows what, but here they are for your amusement.

 

Solstice

Midsummer in the North is surreal. I watch the sky like I’d eye a Dali painting, wondering if something will melt under the impossible sun. I came here to escape. I came here for dark and silence, for the endless cold stretching out before me as if I could see it. I came here because at night I forget. But today there is no night, only days and days contained in 24 hours. It is incomprehensible, this solstice of the pole. It is maddening. I look up at the heavens and yell curses at the sun that refuses to set.

 

 

Pain

They asked her how bad the pain was on a scale of 1-10. She replied that it was an 8. Physical pain or emotional pain they wanted to know. They seemed very serious, as if the answer would change everything.

Without warning, she burst out laughing, and they looked at each other to silently say “72 hour hold”. There was no mind left to this one.

When she caught her breath there were small tears seeping from the edges of her eyes. Her face caught some of their seriousness and they looked at her expectantly.

“You think there’s a difference?”

 

There’s a loneliness to it that you can’t understand until you’ve stood before someone

Claiming they love you

And asking you to climb Everest on a broken leg.

There’s a distance placed between you

That is uncrossable until you’ve gotten the passport stamp of depression.

I try to yell across to you

And give you the details of the landscape

But all you get are echoed words, bits and pieces of a painting

That will never be whole.

The space distorts words.

There may be others with me, but we have no time for each other

Each too busy yelling across the void to someone or other

Wishing they could go home.

Someday I will make a camp here

And forget the other side.

Inviting each new person inside to warm themselves at my fire

And we’ll be together

Alone.

 

The following is a set of drabbles entitled “Food”:

First Day of Treatment

The bowl of pasta was large. It seemed to grow as she looked at it, drowning in alfredo sauce. Reluctantly, she picked up her fork and began to twirl the strands around it. It was a painstakingly slow process. Fork to bowl. Turn. Pick up noodles. Mouth. Chew. Swallow. By the time she was halfway through it was cold, the sauce congealed. How would she finish? She felt eyes heavy on her as she took yet another bite, her stomach already churning. But she couldn’t stop: they were watching. But she knew how to fix it: fingers down the throat.

Love

When he speaks about food, he is intense. She rarely sees him like this otherwise, leaning forward, eyes sparkling, hands gesturing madly. She understands his passion; food can turn her into a different person too, but it’s the love affair with it that makes no sense. It excites her though. She finds herself making up excuses to eat with him, to spend money she doesn’t have on beautiful dinners. She listens with unblinking eyes when he talks, trying to capture the essence of his speech. But every night after they eat together, she goes home to pinch at imagined fat.

Binging

She’s hungry. So often she forgets to feel hungry, or convinces herself it’s something else, but today she feels empty and it is undeniable. There is a gnawing, pulling, dark sensation at the very bottom of her, telling her that nothing will satisfy. She searches for the cure: meat and potatoes, ice cream, comfort food, fascinating flavors, good company. No matter what goes in she remains hungry, until the desperation and calories blend into a shocking kind of nausea, but always an emptiness. Nothing will fill her, so she picks up her phone, hoping his voice will do the trick.

Life

He tells her stories of food. Aztec is his favorite. He tells her how bodies became food and food became bodies and the earth regrew itself out of the gods. Food and memory and existence wrapped together. Her favorite is when he teaches her words. Poutine. Macerate. Cassoulet. Her world expands. Some days he shows her how he likes to cook, dousing everything liberally with truffle salt. When they go to restaurants, he waxes rhapsodic about the foods he loves: oysters, pate, and wine. She tastes his words and his food and begins to eat life for the first time.

Empty Plate

Rule: never eat in the morning. It was 10:30 AM. They ordered a waffle to share. She took a few moments to try to observe it. There was fruit topping it, fresh and plump, but her eyes were drawn immediately to the sizeable heaping of whipped cream. The smell was forceful and immediate, sweet and full, almost golden. She breathed deeply, closing her eyes to take in only the scent. It smelled good. She reminded herself that it would taste good, she liked waffles. Five minutes later, there wasn’t a bite left. It was more than an hour before noon.

Victory

He pushes the plate towards me. I feel a flutter of uncertainty. Rabbit. I’ve never eaten rabbit before. He’s taken a bite of it, and his face tells me that he just ate a bit of rabbit-flavored heaven. Something in me snaps and I grin, pulling the plate closer. A deep desire to be here in this moment, tasting the food before me, sharing the conversation around me, has left no space for anxiety. The rabbit looks juicy and tender, covered in some deliciously unknown sauce. One bite tells me it’s complex, balanced, intriguing. A smile flutters across my face.

 

 

I’m sitting and waiting. I don’t know what I’m waiting for, but I hope that someone will tell me soon. I don’t like to wait. My muscles clench and unclench. My jaw grinds away at itself. My eyes fall out of focus.

But boredom is the kiss of death. My mind has nowhere to go. It runs and grabs and discards ideas at spitfire speed. I begin a thought and it falls away as it’s devoured by something new. What where how do I think? My mind eats itself, a dog chasing its tail, Ouroboros.

I am no phoenix to grow again when I’ve fallen, and I wait. I rip open my fingers, biting at the skin. I chew on my lips. I crack my knuckles. Nothing ends and so nothing may begin.

Where is the exit?

My legs will not stand because I know the rules and someone will tell me what I’m waiting for.

I will not look away. I am eternal and eternally incomplete.

I am a constant reminder of loss.

Why is there no exit?

The Power of Pets

This is a post about how much I fucking love my cats. I was in no way planning on writing this post today, or possibly ever. But last night my baby boy, my perfect, favorite, sweet, psycho, needy, crazy, lunatic cat Sid Vicious (Darth Siddius the Kittius) died unexpectedly. And it’s honestly the only thing I can think about, and I need to talk about it somehow, and as this is my blog I get to do what I want.

I had a friend ask me recently what the point of pets was. I thought everyone got how awesome fuzzy sweet creatures were, but that question reminded me that it’s likely not everyone understands how integral my cats are to my mental well-being.

People are scary. They require understanding. They expect things of you. They can be passive aggressive, or angry, they don’t always tell you what they want, they can be hard to read. Oftentimes they challenge you and ask you to do incredibly difficult things, especially if you have a mental illness (people ask me to eat and not to cut, which are two of the hardest things in the world for me). While people can also support and share and talk and comfort, they ask for these things in return, and they have biases, and they can be confusing. They require energy. They rarely allow you to be wholly yourself, as each person in the world has different needs and triggers and concerns which you have to be aware of when you’re around them. People have a limited supply of how much they’re willing to listen to you bitch and moan or cry or hate the world. So people are both limited in what they can offer you, and they limit you in that they have expectations and needs and frustrations. For me especially, communicating with others can be particularly difficult, and because of the sensitive nature of a lot of my problems, I don’t feel comfortable being very open around other people. Especially because people often get really uncomfortable and try to make me do things I don’t want to do when I open up to them, I’ve learned that it’s often better to not rely on others.

Pets are completely different. Some people might suggest that animals only like you cause you feed them, or that they don’t really distinguish between people, or they don’t actually care about you. Well even after I moved out, I was Sid’s special favorite. From the moment I walked in the door at my parents’ to the moment I left, he would follow me around, yelling at me to pet him or love him or pay attention to him. He liked me and my dad better than anyone else, and he had his habits with us: he’d wake my dad up first thing in the morning and have a cup of coffee with him. He was needy. He wasn’t afraid to tell you what he wanted, but he never needed that much. He screamed to tell you he wanted to be petted or to stop petting him. He purred to tell you yes please. He hated being ignored, and god forbid if you let a different cat under the blankets first. He had Personality. SERIOUS personality, and he knew who he liked and he knew who he didn’t like, and he liked his older brother and he hated the dog and he loved being cuddled and he hated being held and he loved the sun and he hated loud noises. Sure he needed things, but nothing draining. Just some love. Some cuddles. Some pets.

He was distinct. He knew who he was and he made no secret of it so you never had to guess what he wanted or needed. And best of all he didn’t give a shit what you did unless it affected him. He would love you and rub up against you and only get unhappy if you ignored him. If you were struggling or not eating or depressed, he treated you exactly the same (although his magic cat sense told him when you were sick and he’d give you extra special cuddles). He didn’t judge. He didn’t ask you to do things that were outside of your comfort zone. But he did calm me and comfort me. He was warm and soft and purred, and made me feel close to another being, a being that didn’t require me to censor my thoughts or my feelings at all. Full and complete acceptance.

And what is absolutely wonderful about this kind of acceptance, this unthinking support, is that it made me a better person. I am not usually a very nurturing person. I’m not good at patience. I’m not good at spending time trying to puzzle out what someone is saying or wants or needs. I’m generally not very mothering or very caring. But sweet baby Jesus, when I was around that cat I had the patience of a saint. I would pet him for hours. I would sit without moving until my legs were numb rather than wake him up if he was sitting on me. If he was complaining about something, I would pet him and play with him and feed him and do whatever I could to try to figure out what he wanted because he was my baby, he was my responsibility. He had no better way of telling me what he wanted than meowing, so I had to figure it out. And he brought me back to reality. All of my cats do. When I’m drifting in my mind, somewhere unpleasant and self-hating, and a cat comes by and sticks his butt in my face, there’s only so much more metaphysical musing I can engage in. The physical sensation of touching a soft cat and having them arch up into my hand and purr can do more to center me than anything else.

And so my cats make me feel stronger. They make me feel as if I can take care of something, as if something needs me, as if something loves me no matter what and doesn’t need me to change. They remind me of the good bits of the world, and they remind me that in this exact moment there is a silly, goofy, sweetheart in front of me, tickling me with his tail and begging for a good scratch. They don’t demand that I change myself or make myself better or become healthier. That’s what scares me about other people. Other people put food in front of me or take away my razors or put me in therapy. My cats just show up and tell me that they need me. And then I have to remember for myself that I need to take care of me to take care of them. They make me strong enough to do things outside of my comfort zone on my own terms. They butt into my life when I least expect it and don’t ask me to feel better…they just ask me to cuddle with them for a bit. And somehow this utter rejection of everything that’s going on in my mind makes me feel better anyway.

I love my cats for the freedom they give me. And so I will miss my Sid more than I can say. I’ll miss how if you pet him just the right way you could make him do somersaults. I’ll miss how loud and obnoxious he was. I’ll miss how you could make him go flying across the room in terror if you sneezed too loudly. I’ll miss how he always had to be at the center of everything. I’ll miss how when I left my parents house my clothes would be nearly gray from all the cat fur I had gotten on them while cuddling him. I will miss how statuesque he looked when sitting still and upright, and how he and his brother made perfect little Siamese bookends whose heads moved in synch at any noise. I’ll miss the stupid fighting under the covers when two cats tried to get in at once. I’ll miss it all. Mostly I’ll miss that my baby who loved me for nothing more than the fact that I would give him my time is gone.