Archive for the 'GUS' Category

Now I cried a lot.

You know how sometimes someone will say something to you about yourself and at the time you think you don’t care? Like say someone said, “and people hate you for it too” [in this case the topic was how I tweet]. I know I said something back to the affect of, “if I cared about numbers I’d have changed how I tweet a long time ago”. And that is true, if nothing else I’ve made a point of becoming even more myself on Twitter and tweeting out the most random of random shit that comes into my head, because in general I tweet how I talk, I also write in a very similar fashion to how I talk, but only to a degree, I don’t talk in under-punctuated run-on sentences [very often]. I’m well aware that my form of humor and almost constant sarcasm and/or realism in my tweets is an acquired taste.

This comment has stuck with me. It’s been bugging me. I guess I don’t understand why anyone would read or follow my tweets if they hate me. I also don’t really know why when I’ve clearly separated myself out from the Vancouver Social Media scene why I’m STILL a hot hate topic. I have made some friendships with people inside the scene but I hang out with them outside of it.

It makes me feel bitter and bullied, like people are just sitting back and waiting for me to lose it, hospital style. If I get upset to any degree on any public forum, including my blog, it feels like I can’t just be upset, it feels like the haters are sitting in anticipation of when they can declare that I haven’t changed.

I have a temper, no matter how hard I work on myself I’m always going to have a temper but I’m not going to blog from the perspective of forcing all the progress I’ve made down people’s throats, I simply write how I feel on whatever medium I’m on. If you have to ask yourself why someone would be as open as I am about my life, and my trials and tribulations then you aren’t my target audience.

Normally I wouldn’t even address this because it feels like I’m defending myself, but I’m feeling pretty down right now. I suppose it only makes sense, to me anyway, given the posts from January that I am feeling a certain amount of insecurity online. I make a point of not checking my stats unless I’m under attack, which I was and so I know that my parents are stalking both my blog and my twitter page. I don’t know if they think this will intimidate me into not posting and if they think it’s been working, when in reality I’ve been super busy with a new kitty who came to us with some health issues which lead to me being pretty down and having a tough time going from taking care of my sick old best furry buddy to taking care of a sick kitten with no one but myself to blame for my emotions. Feeling like I got a new kitty too soon but knowing I couldn’t give up on the little guy. Breaking down somedays out of emotional exhaustion and feeling like a fucking loser because it was triggered by cats. But coming home to an empty apartment after Christmas was hard on us both. I had no way of knowing, thinking we were rescuing a healthy cat, which was naive in and of itself, that the wee Roy Kucing being a bit sick for over half the time we’ve had him would take an emotional tole. I do have an introductory post for Roy in drafts but never got it finished.

I would also be a flat out liar if I were to proclaim that certain aspects of things happening or rather not happening with my immediate family weren’t bothersome. The fact that I’ve made three attempts to obtain my grandmother’s new address and phone number and have been ignored on all fronts. But yet my parents stalk my site. It makes me sick. Regardless of what is going on between my parents and claims that I never contact this woman and then refusing to let me contact her when she’s dying doesn’t even make sense to me. It certainly isn’t making me want to have any sort of civil conversation with them, but if they actually think I’d bring any of this up to my almost 89 year old dying grandmother, fuck it, I can’t even entertain these ideas because it simply makes my blood boil. The fact that they are stalking me instead of giving me a simple fucking address speaks volumes to me.

For me, right now, I’m dealing with the fact that I AM dealing with things. I’m dealing with feelings. I’ve never kept it a secret on here that I’ve abused prescription drugs in the past. This has gotten me into A LOT of trouble online and in my personal life. It made me feel invincible and I got behind a computer screen a few too many times under the influence and well, I think the majority here know how the rest of that story goes. Even this time last year I couldn’t sit in my feelings. That is why it is ok if I simply do sit in my feelings and don’t exercise, don’t read, don’t write, just sit, I can’t do it forever but it’s where I’m currently at: because at least I’m sitting at least I’m not fucked up on a stash of clonazepam and seroquel. Having real feelings is a trip, it has allowed for many breakthroughs with my psychiatrist but it is incredibly hard at times. I’m used to freaking out and then freaking out some more with maybe a bit more freak out thrown in for good measure but not freaking out means the pain has to go somewhere and if it isn’t going into the drugs and it isn’t going into freaking out then where it is going is where I’m going right now and those places suck balls but if I don’t go to them then I can never get better, I will never know if I can be one of the lucky ones who does recover from this at times debilitating illness.

This morning when I woke up feeling suicidal and outed myself with my dailybooth photo I was glad to find myself with words not going straight to draft because I won’t suffer in silence, I will put it out there so that I don’t do stupid shit and end up in the hospital again or have friends running around trying to find me and contacting Adam and afraid for my safety because I know having lost someone who stayed silent and from the life I’ve lead that if there is one thing I’m not no matter how shitty I feel is alone in this and if I have to put my pain out on the internet to keep myself here then I’m going to put it out on the fucking internet and haters gonna hate no matter what, but the people who love me are also still going to love me.

It’s a Process

People ask me if the site won’t be Gus Greeper anymore and if I will change everything online to my name now. The answer is no. I knew when I named the site after Gus that she would one day die. And a lot of people call me Gus and she is tattooed on my arm, I think it would feel like I was trying to forget her and I don’t know it seems almost disrespectful too, regardless of her not having been a human. I will get around to updating the about page and blarg who gives a shit about that stuff right now.

The other day I thought it was coming up on the third month anniversary but I quickly realized it’ll be two months since she passed on Thursday. I find grief so strange, the similarities to my depression are such that I’m thankful I have friends who will remind me that it hasn’t been that long since I lost my best furry buddy, the longest relationship I’ve ever had, that it is ok to get upset and cry. I have forever been a person who will easily cry over something as simple as spilled milk, but I detach from trauma and reattach generally at the most inappropriate of times causing myself even more grief.

I have forced myself to deal with this more so than I think I have with other losses, this is not to say I haven’t had situations not even remotely about Gus trigger me into the grieving process. I have tried to force myself to literally stand in my feelings. If I think I hear her paws and feel a small jolt of energy as I anticipate her jumping up on the couch to turn and realize she isn’t there, I try to acknowledge it and give myself permission to simply miss her.

where Gus rests.

I love the urn we got for her; it has dancing lions on it. It’s comforting having her here, not creepy, I was worried it would be strange and creepy but the alternative to not having her cremated individually is what was creepy to me.

R.I.P. Gus 1994 ~ 2010

November 5, 2010

It is hard for me to believe that by the time I push publish on this at sometime tomorrow that Gus will already be gone. Adam and I picked the photos for this memorial post a couple weeks ago now, to make it easier to post it. I wasn’t sure if I was going to write anything or not, by my mind is moving at a million miles an hour. How am I going to walk without keeling over to the vet’s office? And how am I supposed to walk back in the apartment with an empty carrier and no kitty to greet me?

It has been incredibly hard trying to figure out exactly when to do this. If this was about us we could probably keep her around for another two or three months, but it is about her. She is in pain and I don’t know how I knew, given that I am not a religious person maybe it is that I do have a spiritual side. In my gut, I knew that I would know when it was time, that she’d let me know in her own way, and when she jumped up onto my lap on Wednesday morning and didn’t purr at all, I knew. No matter how crappy she has been feeling over the past few months she has always kept purring. It took me a couple hours to muster the courage to call but I had to.

I’m not a person who has had to deal with a lot of death in my life. Animal wise, people wise. I have not had to deal with death since 2003. I remember how I felt, parts of it, and I’m dreading it. Especially given that Gus has no say in this. I’m keeping the promise I made to myself and the promise I made to her, that I wouldn’t let her suffer. Part of me feels like I have left it too long but on the other she is still *happy* which has only added to the difficulty.

She led a great life and we went through many a gauntlet together, other than Adam she had never really taken to anyone else very much, but a few were able to win her over. Being the runt of the litter she always had bizarre ways of letting you know you’d made her inner circle, such as drooling on you or giving you a quick chin or nose lick. There are so many things I can’t imagine living without, little things, like the sound of her paws when she’d walk across the hardwood, when she’d purr so hard and drool so much it would soak her nose, so many kisses on my nose and chin I’d have to stop her because it would hurt after a few. Watching her and Adam curled up sleeping together on the couch. All the things that annoyed the shit out of me like her pushing her face under my books all the time so I couldn’t read, I’m going to miss that now.

I’m not sure who is luckier, you all reading this or me that the scanner is broken so the only photos of Gus are ones taken since I started Blogging in 2005. If it were working I’d probably be scanning in kitten photos like mad.

———————————

November 6, 2010

We are home. Today dragged and then it flew. I’m riding the shock wave, hoping it lasts a while I’m not really ready for it to sink in. She was ready but not past ready and even though she is gone, I’m glad she went before she wasn’t recognizable as Gus anymore. I feel completely detached right now so saying anything much else isn’t going to enlighten me to this loss and what it means. I just know for that for a long time that for sixteen years she was the best cat I could have ever asked for. I can’t even imagine how much I’m going to miss her.

You were so loved little buddy R.I.P. Gus.

just being adorable as always

usandgus

should have used Sport mode not Pet mode.

kitty kisses.

Lacoste Kitty.

The Translator & Gus

abc and glc

the toy is hers!

sleeping cuties

greeper drummers

buddy love.

annoyed at you i am stop taking my picture ps. yes i can haz the cutest pawz on earth

love is.

gus.

she stole my reading spot

STOP get your own keyboard

kitty wants attention.

Impromptu Yoda look a-like contest winner! GO GUS!

no vegas, you don't play the guitar better than meow

end of stretch

gus and dr. vegas

gripper

ALL ABOUT HER!

greepy tongue.

famdamily

It’ll never end, just get easier or something.

Although I’ve been making a valiant effort at getting out of the house everyday, and making it most days, for the rest of the day and the days that I don’t, I seem to be dealing with a side of my depression that has reared up before but never to this extent.

I sit. In the same place for hours and listen to music and stare off into space; and that is it. According to my psychiatrist there are other depressed people who do this, not like that really makes me feel any better about it. I think about things, like how awesome it would be to read a book or write a post or do any number of things but I don’t do them. I sit. And then, when I do leave the apartment I’m fucking late for everything right now, which is uncommon for me. I did notice this getting worse a couple months ago actually but didn’t think much of it until I was late for my last two therapy sessions now, so something has to give here. I find it interesting how different depression is for me now. I never used to be able to even sit in my feelings; I would go to bed. In that sense I’ve made some odd progress because I can technically stand myself enough not to drug myself out and head back to bed. Not abusing my prescription medication is also good! Little PSA there as well.

The lack of motivation is killing me and no one can snap me out of it I have to snap myself out of it. I don’t want to be forced. Some of this is seasonal some of it is Gus, the end is drawing nearer on that one. Some of it is having issues letting go of a huge betrayal suffered a couple of months back but at the same time, with that betrayal I was also finally forced to learn a lesson, one that I have never wanted to learn and have fought learning for a really long time, that being, I simply can not have resolution to every single situation that goes wrong in my life. Some people are simply dip-shits and will remain that way no matter what I do or don’t say to them or about them. That is a really hard one for me. I believe in forgiveness and honesty even when it hurts and I generally see no reason why some sort of peaceful agreement can’t be reached but some people would rather be miserable or pretend they don’t care but what people forget and this always irritates the shit out of me is that it takes energy to hate, to dislike and to behave in petty ways. I waste the energy too, don’t get me wrong, but I try not to. Do or do not there is no try, I know this, but it is easier said than done. It was also said by a little green creature and written by an ego masturbator extraordinaire but that is beside the point, I will get over this betrayal at my own pace and there are more lessons to be learned here, I’m not quite ready to lift my ship from Dagobah yet so back off and get yer own light sabre.

Now that I have learned that I can not have resolution to everything that doesn’t work out in my life because I’m not seeking it out anymore, I have to learn how to let it go because this is a baby step process, fuck it is huge for me that I am even willing to accept this much, because having disagreements with people who mean something to me is generally very hard on me, I never take it well, my fears of abandonment kick in and I start saying stupid shit and Sabotage by the Beastie Boys starts playing on the soundtrack of my life running on repeat in the back ground.

I know that I MUST I MUST I MUST INCREASE MY BUST, but seriously I know I MUST keep getting the fuck out of the apartment and maybe I should even start posting the photos I have been taking. Tell some stories and shit, it is motivation I need. I wish I could buy some or that David Sedaris would ring my buzzer and finish reading this book to me. It is draining feeling this depressed every day. I want to pick up the book I want to sign into WordPress and write stuff but, but but but.. that is the problem!

SO I don’t know, I’m here and there and everywhere. Impressed, unimpressed, friend, foe, lover, hater, high, low. I’m going through something big. I think it has a lot to do with Gus being so close to the end. If being able to at least sit IN my feelings continues I may just get to the bottom of this here bout yet.