Catboy and upcakes

Thank you very much to those who knew I celebrated two years of sobriety last week and left comments. It meant a lot and helped to make the occasion very special. I said I was going to close out my two years with a post about the many gifts of sobriety, but then the time came and I couldn’t. I lost my dear sweet cat of 18 1/2 years a few weeks ago and, I don’t know, life happened and I just couldn’t bring myself to feel, let alone write about gratitude.

The cat was very, very old. The above picture, taken days before we had him put down, doesn’t show that he’d shrunk to 5 pounds and how his hip bones jutted out like matted fur and he was so wobbly he could barely stand. His death wasn’t a surprise and, in fact, we’d joked for years that we would have him stuffed when he died because he’d seemed such a permanent fixture in our lives. Instead we had him cremated and now he sits on our mantle in a small wooden box with his name on it. I guess we became those people.

And by those people, I guess I mean people doing normal life things, ready or not. In the week following the cat’s death, I was mostly fine but then I’d be putting laundry away and notice the giant hole in my heart. Honestly, I was mourning the loss of a life I haven’t known in years as much I was missing my sweet catboy. What I noticed was how much grief over one thing stirred up grief and fear and even resentment over other, seemingly unrelated things. Nothing new had happened in my life other than the cat dying, but here I was trapped in old patterns of feeling afraid and hopeless.

I have to keep an eye on this kind of feeling because I’ve been depressed before and taken medication for it. I’m trying not to right now, though I am taking supplements and definitely exercise. I’m trying to be kinder to my monkey mind (thanks, Christy) and so I just sit with it and listen to the chatter and occasionally feed it cupcakes, like the one I had at lunch the day I hit 2 years sober.

Not my photo because I ate mine before I thought to take one.

I met my sober friend Lisa for lunch. She is behind me in sobriety by not quite a month, and marking the occasion with her felt right. The place we went to has these things called upcakes, which are basically upside down cupcakes with the top cut off and icing all over. The description doesn’t do justice to how amazing these things taste. It must be the homemade icing.

For awhile there, I worried I might have to ditch dessert…again. I was hitting sugar hard and had picked up a few pounds and was feeling pretty miserable about it. This was even before my cat died and work got more stressful and old issues flared up. Then I sort of prayed on it in a half-assed, totally non-religious way — more like a “I don’t think I can do this anymore” whine thrown into the ether. And it seemed to work and I am grateful because it means I get to keep occasional upcakes and Rita’s gelatis, which are usually followed by 3 mile runs the next morning because I’m not fucking magical.

It’s ego and vanity, but running makes me feel good about myself. I’ve lost weight and so far kept it off and I can run longer and faster and it’s hard to explain how good that feels and how that keeps me going during the tougher moments. Oh, I also think I’m going to hit a meeting in the near future. I have no intention of attending regularly again, but I miss that sameness and feeling of comfort that comes from sitting in a room with a bunch of stranger-drunks.

We also plan to adopt two new kitties. The kids have never known a pet that sees children as anything other than a threat or competition, so I think this will be good for all of us.

I guess I did get around, in a round about way, to writing about the gifts of sobriety. I had the loss and felt it and didn’t run from it and cause it to mutate and multiply. Life isn’t easy sober, but it’s easier than I ever made it out to be.

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