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Aug 29, 2017 - 03:24 PM |
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NSFW: Self-Loathing And Retching At The Pink Door Of Death |
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I had to put my kitty Greta to sleep on Friday, around 5:30.
I will not lie to you: I may never forgive myself for this. Yes, there was nothing to be done - it was cancer in her liver and the aggressiveness of the chemo needed may have killed her too - and yes, “it was time”. But I cannot seem to forgive myself for letting her pass, and letting the doctor put her to sleep.
I read somewhere that animals think but only in very simple, very immediate ways. “I’m hungry”, “this is good”, “that is prey” and such. But this person (who worked with animals) said that they could also discern some subtleties when it came to things like being sick - like how they would hide if they don’t feel well, how their mood changes, how their habits change.
But what broke me was that when they’re at the vet, they instinctively know “they will help me”. She was always unusually good at the vet, never ran, never hissed or made a fit.
When I’d gotten there, Greta’s blood sugar was dipping and she was on a seizure watch - so when we saw her for the last time, she was still on a IV line to a glucose machine. She hissed and panicked when brought in to see us. She didn’t recognize us until I started talking to her, and she snapped out of her daze like someone flicking a light switch. She meowed questioningly, as if to say “when’d you get here?”
She relaxed a little, still confused. We wrapped her up in a blanket so she couldn’t run and rip the IVs out, but she calmed. We all told her we loved her and we were sorry, but I kept my voice as light and happy as I could. I wish I’d gotten to pet her more but something incommunicable gave me pause. I don’t know if it was sadness or guilt or pain or understanding or empathy or some amalgam but it is a regret I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
“They will help me”.
A couple minutes later, she was panicking as she was given the sedative. She meowed loudly, knowing something was wrong.
“They will help me”.
She went peacefully, hearing me tell her she was a pretty girl, and I loved her and how she was my favorite. The second vial went in just as slowly and that was it. We held her as she passed. It was more gentle than I ever expected but seeing her as a limp… thing is so much worse than anything can prepare you for. I’ve seen the Dead and grown largely immune, even familiar to it in my life… but this was a thing I cannot even detail. I wanted to die I was so angry, I wanted to die violently as if it would appease that anger - but all I could do was cry. And retch.
She was like a child’s toy, then without shape or meaning unless we moved her to pet her or say goodbye.
Her eyes never closed, her pupils just went huge.
I cannot get this image out of my head and its haunting me. I go home and shake like its deep winter weather. I stare at the wall and hold myself. I am barely eating one meal a day, and not eating well at all at that. Eating makes me sick and being hungry makes me sicker. The one “good” thing is I haven’t been drinking in excess since this happened… but it looms over me. That same insane level of alcoholism I had after a woman left me in 2009 sounds like the perfect solution but it was a habit that nearly killed me.
“They will help me”.
And to be honest, were there any guarantee of it, I would happily end it all to be with her. Like: if there was some assured way of knowing there was something beyond living, and she was there, I would do it. But there can’t be, so I won’t - and thats even worse. Because without that guarantee, I know I will never see her again, ever. She has gone into an ether beyond which there is not darkness nor cold nor anything, not even silence.
And she went there hearing me tell her I loved her.
While thinking “They will help me”.
I’ve always had deep issues with self-loathing. And not in the usual teenage angst type or the shit they make Hollywood movies about, the shit you can define or recover from or even live with. Its an ingrained part of me to such an extent, I know I had it as a small child but couldn’t verbalize it until my 20s.
And this makes it so much worse. So, so much worse. She depended on me to help her and I couldn’t. No one could - and yet, the guilt is still there. The guilt that she had to die, ever, is some how unacceptable to some lizard part or child part of my brain. The level of unacceptable is fucking indescribable; I want to run head-first into a wall to knock myself out, just to turn off my brain. (I won’t, but the instinct is there.)
I’d lost family and friends before. I buried an ex last October. But this is many, many multitudes worse. And my self-awareness is whats making it worse. The same dumb-thought-machine that made Greta think “They will help me” is making me think “No one can help.”
I miss her so much I am making myself sick with over-thinking.
And all I can overthink about is her wide, dark eyes as she lay there limp, wrapped up in a towel, never to be warm again and that we would help her up to the very end.
And what I wrote here is an abject failure, because what I feel is so much more than this.
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