Winston

I think we knew something was wrong when he didn’t come home Sunday night but Carrie and I never imagined the worst. We kept telling each other that, although out of character, in his younger days Winston sometimes went out catting around for a day or so then showed up on the front porch singing for his supper.

Last night while I walked our street, flashlight in one hand, shaking a can of Pounce in the other, our neighbors informed me that another neighbor down the street found our kitty, Winston dead in a driveway on Sunday morning. He was on the losing end of a fight with a wild animal. Sobbing I knocked on the man’s door who found him to ask if he still had Winston. He took him to the SPCA, not knowing it was our cat without a collar to identify him. We tried in the past to get Winston to wear a collar. Early attempts resulted in his getting it halfway off with his bottom jaw stuck until someone got home and helped. Then we tried break away collars which he learned very quickly are easy to break away.

My heart is heavy today. I am sad. I am angry. I want to go home and curl up in a ball and take a nap but I know I will only miss his insistent meowing to wake up and feed him yet again. I will miss the thump of his paws hitting the cabinet each morning when he jumped up to eat. I will miss the dramatic way he would rear up with paws flat on the glass door asking to come in. I would give anything to have him sit next to me on the couch kneading my legs and purring despite the fact that in the past this behavior often sent me over the edge.

I am sure this is all too dramatic for a cat but I really don’t care right now. I am sure I will be better tomorrow and better still the next day but again I don’t care right now. Right now I want to mourn my cat. I want to miss him. I want to cry. If he’s up there in Heaven and I know he is I want him to know he was loved and missed.

Pandora’s Pill Box

Went to my GP today to see if he could give me something to help me sleep and take the edge off my anxiety. I really didn’t think this was such a big deal in this day and age of a medication for everything and everyone on medication. I hadn’t been to this particular doctor for years choosing instead to hit the local clinic around the corner for common colds and the like. He was my GP through Junior High and High School as well as my grandfather’s doctor after he moved to Houston. In fact, this is the man who had my grandfather briefly committed to a psych ward. How would you like to put that on your family medical history?

He tells me he doesn’t want to prescribe anything until I have seen the psychologist upstairs because he doesn’t want to give me something that in six months we realize wasn’t correct. Okay, but all I really want is something to help me sleep. We’re not talking Lithium or Haldol here just a mild sleep aid. His nurse called the man upstairs and sets me up to go back at 1:30 to see him. The whole thing was starting to have a dream like quality at this point.

I go back at 1:30 sit down with the shrink and let him know I am having trouble sleeping. I haven’t always. In fact, I used to sleep like the dead. He wants more. Do I have mood swings? Yes, but again this not a new thing. Do I drink? Yes, socially and we are very social animals. Family history of depression? Yes, several members, almost too many to count, are currently taking one antidepressant or another. Appetite? Yes, too much of one as a matter of fact, which is one reason I do have to be depressed. Do I think I’m overweight? No, I think I weigh as much now as I did when I finished my first semester of college and quite frankly it sucks. On and on the questions went. Where did we live? Why did my parents divorce? What are their moods like?

At the end of the forty minute speed session he tells me he can’t make a diagnosis without more information. He thinks I may not be a black and white case of bipolar disorder but clearly my universal reference points are skewed. Why is it I have friends who have been prescribed Lexapro, Zoloft, Paxil, Ambien and everything else under the sun when they’ve gone to their doctor with similar problems but I feel like I’m being led by the nose towards a padded room? I just want to sleep but now I’ll have to lie awake wondering if I do in fact have a gray case of bipolar disorder although I know damn well I don’t.

Maybe I think too much but somthings wrong.......

I’ve been putting off this post for a few days. In fact, I’ve gone over and over it a million times in my head. What do I want to say? What am I feeling? My emotions are all over the map. A friend called Friday night at 12:30 a.m. She was at a bar with her husband and had run into another friend that we haven’t spoken to since March and the last correspondence received was back in July. Friend A was calling to tell us Friend B is now engaged.

The call only lasted about 5 minutes but I’ll be damned if I didn’t lay there in bed for another hour, staring into the dark, thinking how hurt my feelings were that I learned this from a third party. I thought of things we have done together in the past; vacations, sitting by the pool with a stash of cheesy entertainment rags, going out, staying in, births, deaths, holidays and camping trips. I was overwhelmed with sadness that we no longer qualify as friends you would call with news of an engagement.

Quickly I moved on to the why emotions, then the anger and now it’s just this resolve that I/we have been dismissed. Erased. I know this is all part of life, growing together, growing apart but does it have to hurt so bad when it happens? Maybe I am making a bigger deal of it than I should. Can you really be that close to someone you haven’t seen since last December, spoken to since March and e-mailed since July? If you asked me right now I would say no, but give me another few minutes to get back on my emotional roller coaster then ask me.