Mar 19, 2017

cat day 3



2016-03-01, with minor edits 2017-03-19. chanced upon this and realised it fits with the things that i've been thinking about recently. 

dear cat,

it has taken you a while but you’re finally comfortable with me. on day 1 you peed in terror of seeing So Many People, and for two days you refused to eat. yesterday you hid in the cabinet, refused to let me near, until you realised i gave really good neck scratches. today you climbed into my lap because i was eating something. you look at me with familiarity today. now you fall so easily into the rub-my-belly roll.

today is hell day, rush everything day, and yet i keep getting distracted by you. you lie in bed, sit on the windowsill, a picture of zen. it is so unfair how you just get to lie around in bed all day. i come back from class feeling so frustrated at myself and there you are just lying there. sort of reminds me of the afternoons i napped on k’s bed while he gamed. that serenity in mere company.

dear cat, it is so unfair that you get to be so unreservedly affectionate. i have forgotten what affection is. it has been many years since i fell into a comfortable sort of affection. and those moments were always rare even then. but you, you just curl up on laps and let your tail cling to legs as you walk by. you don’t have to worry about Boundaries and Hormones and Keeping A Healthy Distance Because You Don’t Want Them To Get The Wrong Idea. you just come, and rub your head against my hand, and lie down. and you bring people into that space, guard down comfortable. these couple of days i am covered in cat fur.

we city humans are suffering from an epidemic of loneliness. we have alienated ourselves from others, lost that healthy companionship and physical affection with other humans in true community and philia. a couple of days ago, upon acquiring my new roommate (and you), i marvelled at how accustomed i have become to being on my own. there is that safety in solitude, and also an impenetrability. what would it be like to have your world so intimately integrated with someone else’s? for two people - lovers, friends, siblings - to be in sync, to be connected every moment of the day, an oasis, a safe little world just for yourselves even if you were continents apart. i have forgotten what that is like. even in all the other interactions there has always been this...gap, between my world and the other's. this not being entirely comfortable, entirely trusting, this lack of a sense of home. yet God says to trust him. two weeks ago my church leader told me that God wanted to reassure me that the effort I was putting in, and my expectations, would not go to waste. and that God is more than enough for me. last week Ben said that God was telling me that His love will saturate my heart, and i will see one day that the cracks were there for a reason. these people don't know what i've been going through, but God led their hearts through my concrete walls. in these days when my heart is a gulf apart from His, He still finds a way in through my friends, and i can only take the word of God in faith.

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