I've spent the last twenty hours in bed. Not asleep, just in bed, staring at the ceiling. I thought I felt bad immediately after the loss of the kittens but the worst was yet to come... I just shut down yesterday morning. Got nothing done, didn't even write in my journal. I hit a brick wall, got overwhelmed by the slightly delayed feelings and just shut down for the lack of a better word. I'm currently in grief fasting and when I was stocking up on liquids, I won't lie: I went past the alcohol section more than once, just pacing back and forth. Thankfully now that I've been in treatment & had a few relapses, I'm fully aware of how temporary the relief is and how horrible I'd feel afterwards if I leaned on that crutch... and there's absolutely no such thing as "only tonight, only until I feel less sad, only ______". It's a struggle and it'll probably be a lifelong struggle to actually feel my feelings without numbing myself with booze.
I also didn't lean on my anti-anxiety pills because what I was and still am feeling isn't anxiety, it's grief, and there's a huge difference between the two. While I'm sure the anxiety's there, it's silenced by the sadness, and sadness I believe is a healthy emotion. I have to grieve despite or even because of it feeling overwhelming. As Karyn said, I'm sober now and re-learning the feels, but I won't re-learn them if I avoid them or drown them out.
I'm going to allow myself a few more hours of rest & then I'm picking up the paint brush: my landlord finally came through after a long wait and provided me with the paints I was promised a long, long while back. Better late than never, eh?
- the kitchen will be a darker, crushed lavender.
- the front/living room accent wall is going to be a dusky pink. Worth noting is that the kitchen & front room walls touch so the colours couldn't clash too badly.
- the bathroom is going to be a crushed periwinkle.
- the bedroom accent wall is going to be a warmer lavender.
Yes, you can probably notice the blog layout follows a similar colour chart. It's my thing now, I guess... crushed pastels ♥. I seem to drift from a full-on morbid gothic preference to this girly, baby pastel phase with nothing in between so I suppose eventually my flat will look like a smograsbord of cutesy, dark, death, unicorns, faeries, zombies and wrong. Epic.
The renovation will keep my mind occupied for at least a couple of days. ♥ Once I feel like I can deal with the slightly darker themes again without playing trigger-hop, I'm also going back to the world of Witcher. There's so much of the first game alone that I'd completely forgotten about because -- let's face it -- when I played it way back when, I was pretty drunk. Same goes for 2 & 3 as well. There's been a few cutscenes I don't recall ever seeing, slight recollection of other bits and then complete blanks in parts I know I must have played through to actually progress in the game but Hell if I remember. And it's not just Witcher, I feel a similar confusion with Mass Effect & Skyrim as well and if I went back to World of Warcraft... I probably couldn't recall half the sh!t I did when I was pursuing the Loremaster achievement. How I functioned or got anything done in that constant state is beyond me. I'm frankly surprised I'm still alive.
Next week I have a meeting with my outreach worker & also a vet appointment to make sure everything's okay with Maiko... and to discuss resiring her, the potential timetable for that, look at potential sires etc. Yes, I'm still fully aware of the selfishness of that decision and yes, it does make me a massive hypocrite because in the past I've lashed out at people who let their cats fall pregnant but... it's not quite the same, is it?
It's out there as far as idiotic decisions go, I'm sure, but it'll also be a very planned, very wanted project unless it's discovered there is, in fact, something wrong with Maiko from either before the pregnancy, or post-partum. She's recovered fine, the after-bleeding's been absolutely minimal and she eats, goes to the toilet, is playful and sleeps so it's highly unlikely there's any after-effects since the birth itself went great... it's just that the kittens weren't meant to survive. Something was wrong with them, and it could just be one of those things like the vet says, or there might've been something wrong with the dad of the litter, or or or, if if if. It could've been anything and for round two, we'll be approaching it as a project. Hormones, highly calorific diet, constant ultras, absolutely no picking her up (which will be tough for me), et cetera et cetera. I'm not going to just casually assume that because everything seems fine, everything is fine.
Of course, if something even slightly awry turns up in her testing, we're abandoning this project and she will get spayed immediately. Otherwise she'll get spayed (along with the potential kittens) when her litter is weaned. Despite her not even being pregnant, there's already homes for up to six, like I said. I'll be keeping one or two depending on gender, personality etc. I have a pretty mellow duo and I don't really see a rebel-type terminator being happy in the bunch. Of course, with kittens, it's hard to say. Kittens are kittens; no matter what they turn out to be as adults, as babies they're absolute little demons but there's tells. There's certain 'expressions' if you will that hints if the cat is particularly mischievous, and just generally observing a kitten will give you a lot of information about their basic personality.
I'm also going to be focusing on giving Rosa more of a fuss. The poor thing got ignored pretty badly toward the end of Maiko's pregnancy. As you can tell, though, her fur's growing back rather nicely (she has alopecia but allowing her to be outside has lowered her stress-grooming so much that her bald patches have filled back in) but the fur's growing back with a different texture: it's a bit wavy, which gives her a far fluffier appearance. I love it. ♥ Thankfully her personality is pretty chill and forgiving so she hasn't really sought out attention in the past week leading up to the birth of the kittens and whether it's me humanising her or something similar (I do tend to do that), I reckon she willingly gave Maiko space and understood why the main focus was on her sissie for a while. She's really mellowed down recently although I'm pretty sure that's to do more with her age (she turned ten this summer) than anything else.
Anyhoop. It's pushing 10AM and there's a few days' worth of cups to wash, broth to brew and walls to paint so I'll hop off for a bit. Will be on Discord or Messenger if I'm needed. ♥ Hope everyone's having a decent Sunday (or whatever the day may be when you read this), and please: if you're angry at me about the aforementioned decision, I understand but... please don't scream at me. I am feeling mega fragile right now. We're upping my med dosage tomorrow to help me out a little bit (as quetiapine in higher dosages has a calming effect without actually destroying emotional capacity).
Maybe in couple of weeks' time I'll be able to fight with you on this or try to explain my point of view... but not now. Not yet. Not just yet. Please. ♥ Thank you.
