The Past Doesn't Always Repeat Itself

 

Hello Invisible Audience,

 

Something novel happened to me a couple weeks ago.

 

As anyone who follows me on social media knows, I have recently adopted two cats from a litter I had been fostering with their mother from the Humane Society. Hetty and Oso have added years to my life with their hilarious antics, and also caused me to yell more than I do in my kids’ Spanish classes—they’re always up to something mischievous, like knocking over glass candle holders that shatter all over the floor or pulling a curtain off the wall one thumbtack at a time or deciding my head is a hurdle to leap at 4 am as part of their self-made, house-wide obstacle course.

 

I adore them.

I left them.

 

I made plans to go to California for Christmas, as I have for six years now, and one of my friends offered to take care of them for me. She is definitely one of the friends that I would trust most in the world with the care of my small furry creatures, and yet leading up to the date of my departure I found it hard to sleep or concentrate. I kept having waking nightmares of them escaping from her house and running into the forest to be gobbled up by coyotes or owls or being lost forever.

 

The day before I left, I spoke to my friend Jason on the phone. He’s the one I stay with in LA for the holidays, and he also recently adopted a cat.

“How are you?” he said.

“Awful,” I said.

“I can hear it in your voice,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “It doesn’t matter how much I know logically that they’ll be ok. Emotionally I feel like I’m gearing myself up to say goodbye to them because I’ll never see them again.”

“You know you’re always welcome here,” he said. “But you don’t have to come if this is too hard for you.”

 

No. I said to myself. No, that won’t work.

 

I thanked him for that option, but told him he should plan to see me unless he heard otherwise.

The next morning, I got up and packed the car, then took a bunch of Kleenex and sat on my bed as I waited for 10 a.m. to roll around, which was when I had a regularly scheduled phone call planned with my therapist.

 

I cried so hard, Invisible Audience. I piled tear- and snot-filled tissues in little mountains around me as my cats dozed nearby and I talked through and cried through and felt through every old fear I had about this. I sat with the knowledge that I have always held myself accountable for anything that happens, whether it is reasonable to or not, including whether it will ultimately be my fault for leaving if something happens to my cats while I’m gone.

Fifty minutes later, I felt wrung out but completely different. I would still miss my cats, but it would not be the end of me, and I wouldn’t be in a puddle of anxiety the whole time I was gone.

 

My friend sent me pictures and updates about my cats while I was in California. At some point, they learned to trust her enough that even if they’d gotten outside, I knew they would have known it was safe to go back in and wouldn’t have run off into the sunset like my greatest fears insisted. Meanwhile, I walked around unencumbered by snow with the sun on my face—one of my many reasons for spending Christmas away from home that makes it possible for me to live in the mountains otherwise.

 

This was different for me, Invisible Audience. I didn’t believe the story inside of me that told me the world was about to end, even as it ravaged my system and told me lies. Even when all my other coping mechanisms didn’t work to quell the anxiety, I knew what I was hearing wasn’t true. I knew that I had the tools to figure it out, and that I didn’t need to change my plans to acquiesce to a terror nearly as old as I am whose existence no longer helps me. And I knew I could trust my friend to take care of my cats, even though I’ve found it hard to trust people for so long.

 

Even if the cats had escaped, it wouldn’t mean my friend wasn’t trustworthy, or that I was to blame for leaving them. It would mean that cats are cats and sometimes shit happens.

 

Sometimes shit happens in the past, and in the present I can learn that I don’t have to keep carrying the fear that the past will repeat itself.

 

Love and kitten kisses,

Morgan

 

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