There are some fears I have overcome and some I haven’t. My deep and real fear of spiders? That one is staying where it is. Not because I like being afraid, but because there’s no way to get rid of it.
I do recall being afraid of thunderstorms that would come up in the middle of the night when I was a kid. I loved thunderstorms during the day. My dad and I would sit on the porch and watch them roll in. But if I was alone in my room and one came up while I was asleep, I’d gather the stuffed animals I always slept with and brought them under the covers with me as I pulled the blankets completely over the top of my head. I’d make a little hole for my mouth so I could breathe in fresh air, but I didn’t come out of my cocoon until the storm had passed. What got me over that fear was going away to college. The first time a storm came by at night while I was alseep in my dorm room, I instinctively reached to pull the covers over my head, but I didn’t because I had a roommate and I didn’t want to look ridiculous to her, even though she was asleep. I told myself that I’m grown and in college, I can’t keep being afraid like I was when I was a kid. And somehow that mental pep talk worked. I’m still no longer afraid.
But here’s what I was thinking of with this prompt. I don’t have many other fears that I’ve overcome, so let me substitute “hard things” for “fear”, as in, what hard things have I done and how did I do them? I’ve written for the past two years about quitting my long time job and how hard, but necessary that was. That was incredibly hard. But I did it by sticking to my boundaries. I maintained that it was not o.k. for me to be treated the way I was and I refused to stay in a place where I knew I would probably continue to be treated that way.
Yesterday, I did another hard thing. I took my sweet kitty to the vet to be put to sleep. She was 19 years old. I got her in 2006 when she was a kitten. I loved her for almost as long as I was a teacher. I had started teaching in January of 2005. She lived in three different apartments and a house with me. She lived with two other cats at two different times, and four different dogs at varying times. She saw me through four career changes, teacher to principal to community college employee, now to medical school employee. Funny story, about 10 years ago, she survived being bitten by a venomous spider. She fell ill one day…fever, lethargy, and a solid mass on her abdomen. The vet’s best guess was that it was a spider bite. It didn’t make me feel any better given that she was an indoor only cat, which means there was a deadly spider in my apartment. It was scary, but she survived.
I used to joke that she loved me so much she was determined not to check out of this world until I went. And I think that’s why during her final days, she refused to go on her own. She was definitely sick, and I definitely thought she could at any moment. I prayed that she would. I came home from work one day and that’s how our ginger cat had gone. I found him curled up on his favorite blanket like he was sleeping. Apparently he had passed during the day while we were at work. Didn’t even know anything was wrong with him. Faye didn’t go out like that. If she had, it would have saved me from having to make the decision to take her in and watching her go. But, I think as long as she knew I was here, she wanted to stay. So she did.
Though it was hard going through the process of watching her go and then burying her in our backyard, I did it because it was the right thing to do. I couldn’t be selfish. The doctor and the vet techs assured me that it was the right thing as well.
Yesterday, as I gathered the rest of her food and other supplies to give to my sister-in-law who is active in the cat rescuing community, I swear I heard her whispery meow behind me. In the last year or so, her voice dimmed to a whisper. So while she was still meowing with every bit of energy she had, it came out very quiet and airy. Our house holds onto sensory things like that. We’ve heard my mother-in-law’s humming. We’ve smelled her cigarette smoke and her hairspray. Granted, we’ve heard and seen other things too that we can’t quite attribute to someone we know, but yesterday, I believe it was holding onto Faye’s meow and giving it back to me as if to let me know that she’s o.k. wherever she is.
It’s going to take some getting used to being without my girl. But I look forward to giving more attention to Nugget, whether she wants it or not. I’m hoping her behavior and attitude might improve now that she is an only kitty. I’ll give her time to settle and get used to that idea before I gradually start opening the baby gates that keep our dogs away from her part of the house. I am determined to integrate the species and be able to take down those baby gates once and for all. They’re rather annoying.
So, as I told all of my students NOT to do, let me close with… In conclusion, you do hard things by just doing them. And with fears, some you just hold onto, and others you can sometimes overcome by talking yourself out of them.
Leave a Reply