I took my cat to the vet today. This involved overcoming great anxiety about the certainty that I would receive bad news. He has been losing weight regardless of how much i supplement his food. I cried waiting and when the vet came in and said “You have a very ssss” I thought she was going to say “sick cat” but she said “sweet cat.” If my cat was being sweet I can only assume he thought I was giving him away and he was wishing he had not broken quite so many heirlooms over the last seven years.

The cat was dumped at my house by an exboyfriend who included his cat when he returned my bike and a few random belongings. Who does that? The asshat I almost married before coming to my senses. Anyway, I kept the cat because I was afraid anyone else would take him to the pound. He is “high spirited”. As weird as he is, I have grown accustomed to his kitty face and would be terribly upset if he was seriously ill. The initial report was that they found nothing obviously wrong. The vet did not seem very concerned but we are waiting on lab work. Hyperthyroidism being a front-runner, which is fixable. Cancer being what I am afraid of.

I have been under the weather for three weeks now and it is really taking a toll on me. Not sick enough to justify calling out of work for a week but just sick enough to have no energy and to feel bad all day at work and not be able to do anything of value on days off. I screwed up my courage to take skinny kitty to the vet and that was all the adulting I could handle for today. I keep looking to my pets as evidence of progress. I am at least able to better tend to their needs now that I am not a little bit drunk or hung over most of the time. I found myself wishing I could get drunk and forget the whole thing but I did not. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of vodka, I will drink no evil. And I can guess that this little headcold that won’t go away might be a lot worse if my body had not been in healing mode for the last four months.

I am trying trying trying. I want to be further along. I want to be running a stained glass, short story and legal advice store in Sedona where we break every day at noon for meditation and tea. In other words, the lady still has no direction and only soft fuzzy ideas of which direction to go. Up. The direction just has to be up. Up out of this dusty despair and wine soaked panic that has been my life for four years. To that end, riding out this odd season of anxiety whilst sober is an accomplishment. As much as I hate how I feel, letting the fear and anxiety just sit without trying to push it down is something I’ve not attempted for years. To walk slowly through it. To be horribly uncomfortable and sit still with it. To trust, however shaky the trust is, that it will pass and that I will be ok. These are milestones even though they don’t feel like anything I want to celebrate. I want to be witty and pithy and wise but tonight I settle for sober.