well, so much for that

The hundred days project.  I have been ill again and, frankly, just not in the mood for any kind of big picture improvement.

My grandson's basketball game for yesterday was cancelled and since I had time coming home from breakfast with my friends, I stayed on the highway and went to visit at the humane society campus north of me.

No one spoke to me and said, "Let's go home now," so I accepted that, but I did find a 12 year old cat who had been transferred from another shelter.  She seems in good health, but moves very slowly.  She will willingly accept attention and touching, but does little more than stop near you and wait for you to initiate contact.

She is relatively old.  She has been in at least two shelters and who knows why she ended up in one in the first place.  She behaves more sad than anything else.  I pulled up a chair to watch her and when the volunteer left her enclosure (the temporary homes of the animals there are not all that home-like, but are quite nice) she stood for a while, then sat for a while and when it was clear that no one was coming back in, she walked to one of the places where she can rest and curled up and eventually went to sleep.

That cat, or one of any of the countless other cats like here, would be a perfect companion for me.  Heck, for anyone who lives a quiet life.  And, I could not take her home because cats are not allowed here.  So, I have to move.

I have to move.
I do not want to move.
I do not want to pack up all my crap again.
Or, move.

But, unless I am willing to spend the rest of my life without cats, I have to move.

This place is kind of a dump.  The landlord has stored all kinds of crap in this flat and because I am such a timid shit about this sort of thing, and even though a couple of the things are inconveniently stored and there is mold in the hallway and the weird stairway to the bedrooms was build and designed by giants, I have not said anything.  I will not.  I is not worth the effort.

So, instead of a hundred days of something meaningful, I am choosing the meaningfulness that would be packing up all my stuff and finding a new place to live.  With cats.

You know, I keep saying this to myself every month and every time that I am missing my cats so much that I think I cannot bear it a moment longer.  But, then another month goes by, beginning with a half-hearted start at packing and before I know it, another month has gone by without me completing anything that would bet me out of here.  Granted, I have a lease to fulfill, but if I was already packed and ready to go, well, I could when the lease expires.

All the mental health care work I am doing seems not enough.

I learned an interesting thing about my mental illness journey this past week.

When I work my ass off, over and over again, trying over and over again to get rid of some memory or behavior that is holding me in place, and I finally work it often enough to actually move past that thing, that thing is still there.

I can see it. It exists just as strongly as it ever did, but I cannot go back to that place. I can see it. It is still there.

It is simply no longer a place that is available to me, no longer that one thing on which I need to keep such a desperate grasp.

And, as I thought about that singular break-away moment(s), I was able to see the other places to which I can no longer travel.

I think that I can still see them because they represent the things that happened to me, which makes them important to where I am now, and it reminds me that I am not the only person who struggles with this stuff.

Just honoring where I am, where each of us might be, on that spectrum.

My breakfast friends are pretty much just breakfast friends.  We all support one another and all that jazz, but breakfast is pretty much the only time we see each other, and e-mails about where to meet for the next breakfast is the only other contact we have.  I went yesterday because I knew the woman who chose the restaurant would show up because she chose the place and I wanted to see her.