It's fine. It's fine. This is fine. I'm fine. 

Insert the dog with the coffee and the flames image here... 

Honestly, though, I am. I have a job, a house, my pets, friends, etc. I'm not an extrovert so this whole staying home thing isn't really a big deal. I'm staying where I am for Thanksgiving, but will go home to my parents (driving) for Christmas (where I will stay the whole time before coming back here to start the spring semester.) I'm being as safe as I can be in the time of a pandemic. 

And yet I'm unsettled. Which is probably pretty normal, to be honest. And I don't think it's just the pandemic, unless it's a build-up of months of pandemic and changes. 

I'm functioning pretty well, especially for someone who had been dreading November and the election and the anniversary of Tamnonlinear's death. I'm doing pretty well for someone in a pandemic under a democracy that is eroded a little more each day in its slide into authoritarianism. (Also, I just had a very difficult time spelling authoritarianism for some reason.) 

But there are cracks, y'know? I have cracks under the best of times-- it's not like depression waits to attack only when there's a global pandemic. I'm content, I guess, but it still feels like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I wonder, sometimes, if anyone is really happy or if content is all any of are lucky enough to be. 

I've spent much of November writing, but not the novel I wanted to do for NaNoWriMo. Instead I've written and compiled just under 200 pages of evidence that I should be promoted. (Ahh, academia.) It's a weird experience. (I did it once before, to go from assistant to associate professor.) On one hand, I'm writing about how great I am, but on the other, as a humanities professor in a world that no longer respects the humanities, it's also a document trying to justify my continued existence. 

I'm off track here, but how many of you have jobs where, when someone asks what you do and you answer, the response 95% of the time is "I hate [that]" 

Them: What do you do? 
Me: I'm a professor at the university. 
Them: What do you teach?"
Me: English. 
Them: Oh, I hate English. 

NINETY-FIVE PERCENT OF THE TIME. To be fair, that happens more here than it did in other places, but still. 

Enrollment in the humanities is down because students come to college expecting it to magically grant them a job, but that's never been the purpose of a liberal arts college. And if it were, it wouldn't help students in the long-run anyway. Current projections are that people will change CAREERS between 5-7 times over the course of their lifetime. A liberal arts degree-- something that teaches people how to learn, how to be curious and ask questions, how to analyze and be introspective-- is to prepare for that kind of eventuality. So what does an English degree get you? ANYTHING YOU WANT. 

(And I actually mean that. Statistically, humanities majors have a better rate of success on things like the MCATS than science majors. So, get a humanities degree and go be a better doctor than you might otherwise have been because maybe you'll have learned empathy along with curiosity and analysis.) 

I have no idea how I've gotten to this point in this post. 

I currently have a student who is frustrated with my class-- and that's fine, it happens, I get it. I suggested that we should Zoom (it's a fully online course, but also ALL courses at my university are online from now 'til the end of the semester.) He said no, Zoom doesn't help, and then went on a diatribe about how pointless the class is and how it's too much work, and what even is the point of these assignments. He specified two of them so I responded, in detail, as to the point of those assignments. Will it help? I dunno, (I also reached out to his advisor and coach in the hopes of the student getting help from someone he's not currently frustrated with.) And I don't blame the student-- they're all stressed right now and I can see how learning about ethos in a required college course doesn't seem immediately applicable to real life, when you're 18 years old and think you know everything but really don't. I'm sure I was equally insufferable about things at that age. (In fact, at that age I petitioned successfully to not have to take a composition course, so....)

I'm tired of justifying my existence. And yeah, I know my career and my existence aren't the same thing, but they might as well be. I don't have a lot else right now, and maybe that seems more extreme because, y'know, pandemic. But still. 

Ugh. I don't know. This is stream-of-consciousness ranting of the kind I used to do as a 20-something. There are no answers because there are no questions. There's complaining but even that is amorphous. (Oh woe is me, no one respects my job.) 

I guess a lot of it is that I'm lonely. It kind of snuck up on me. I'm an introvert who already lived alone, so other than canceling a bunch of summer travel plans and teaching online, my life hasn't changed a great deal due to covid. But even introverts need people. I only have one close friend where I currently live. 

I'm a literal stereotype -- a single, 40something cat-lady. 

Some days I embrace that. Today is not that day. 

And now I'm off to proofread the documents that will hopefully move me up one step in my career that currently feels purposeless, no matter how many pretty phrases I use to justify my existence.

I have abandoned LJ, alas. Find me, comment to me, on DW, please!

(Content Warning: depression, animal death)

 I've been meaning to post for about 9 days now, but life has been weird. Up and down, mostly down, I guess, but I'm okay. 

The night of the election was rough. It's one thing to be told that the mail-in ballots would take a long time to count and we wouldn't know the winner on Tuesday, but it's another to see states colored in red on the map and feel like it was 2016 all over again. (That said, 2016 came as a surprise, whereas I'm much much more cynical about my fellow Americans and their choices than I was 4 years ago. 

And of course elections, since 2016, are inherently twined with the loss of Tamnonlinear and my grief for her. I knew this was going to be a tough November (the first general election since she left us) and for a long time I couldn't see past 11/3. I had no idea what came after. (Yeah, I mean, I have plans for winter break and spring classes and all that, but it didn't feel real.) 

I miss Tam every day. That might sounds like an exaggeration, especially since she wasn't someone I saw every day when she was here. But she meant a lot to me-- she saved me more than once. Then, too, Jessie and Mia are still with me. I've said it before and I'll say it again-- winning those two cats over is one of the best achievements of my life. 

Jessie is doing pretty well, despite his asthma and recurring upper respiratory infections. His asthma treatments help a lot, although catching him stresses him out. (He can be cuddly but only on his own terms. Getting him into a carrier is a challenge.) 

Mia is .... I don't want to say feral because she doesn't lash out (unless you try to pick her up) but still, saying semi-feral is the closest I can come to defining her. She's rarely seen by visitors and has never once been touched by any of them. She'll cuddle with me-- if I'm lying down and don't move too much and if she's in the mood. Because of the stress of trying to catch her and imagining how terrified she'd be at the vet plus how there's absolutely zero chance I could treat her for anything that required medicating etc, she hadn't been to the vet since I got her in 2016. She's getting older and slowing down a bit, and she has some trouble jumping (she climbs onto the bed rather than jumps) but her appetite is (super) strong. She started getting matted, though, presumably because of difficulty grooming due to arthritis (although this is a theory) and she wouldn't let me brush her in any meaningful way. So I started cutting mats out of her fur when she was cuddled next to me-- a couple each time. Unfortunately, I ended up cutting her. I didn't even know it at first-- she didn't react. 

Obviously, I was distraught at having hurt her. I managed to get her to the vet (she's so food motivated that if I'm very careful and don't try it too often, I can get her into a carrier if that's where her breakfast is.) We decided against stitches (the vet gave me a choice and said it was 50/50 on which to go with but stitches required anesthesia, and she's 16 and of unknown health due to not being at the vet for so long). While she was there, she got an examination and vaccines. I took her back a month later for another round of vaccines and the vet was worried that the wound wasn't entirely gone (it was scabbed but not gone.) And I was worried because Mia had been acting weird (for her) in the intervening month. For the first four days or so after getting hurt, she acted normal. She'd cuddle with me and generally it was like nothing had happened. But then she just .... stopped. For two weeks I couldn't touch her, couldn't get near her, she wouldn't come near me, etc. I was pretty distraught. 

Fortunately, she's come around again and now we're back to cuddling every day. I have no idea what changed in either direction. Her wound is also totally healed (the scab came off and there's no sign of the injury just a few days after seeing the vet for the second time.) She does have a heart murmur and her teeth are Very Bad and she's underweight-- so none of that is good. But her bloodwork came back pretty much fine -- which I was genuinely shocked by. I've put her on senior food and started giving her multiple meals a day (the other cats are jealous) since she doesn't eat dry food any more (presumably because of her teeth.) 

Anyway, I didn't plan to write a tangent about Jessie and Mia, but they're inextricably tied to Abby who is inextricably tied to November and elections. 

In the mean time, my very dear friend who lives here in eastern KY, has been having her own cat trouble. Her 11 year old orange boy Rufio started having gastrointestinal issues in August and food changes and steroids didn't help. Imaging at the local vet didn't show much, so we ended up taking him to Louisville (about 3.5 hours away) for a colonoscopy. Then we drove back two days later to pick him up, with a diagnosis of a mass around his colon and a suggestion of surgery, though it would be major surgery (removing part of the colon and likely requiring chipping away part of his pelvis.) When the biopsy came back as non-cancerous, which was a big surprise, the surgery was scheduled, so we drove to Louisville again. But when the surgeon opened him up, he found what he thought to be carcinomatosis all over his abdomen. They took biopsies but didn't remove his colon, since it would only have bought him a few weeks' worth of time, assuming the carcinomatosis diagnosis was correct. He stayed overnight and we went back again the next day to pick him up. (I am heartily sick of driving to/from Louisville. That said, it was worth it.) 

I don't think the biopsy has come back yet to confirm the cancer, but it doesn't matter. Rufio took a turn for the worse and his mom scheduled his final appointment for this morning. I got to say goodbye last night, and he was, as sick kitties often are, stoic but clearly not well. This morning, at home, he passed away. As his mom said, he was doing his own thing right to the end. 

I often wonder if it's disrespectful of me to think of Tamnonlinear in an "after" since she didn't believe in one. But since my own belief is that there is something, and I find it comforting, I do think of her as still existing in some way. And even though she didn't know Rufio, I know she would have loved him and taken him in immediately. (I think of my Callie-cat as being with her, which makes sense she was Callie's rescuer and fosterer, but I also think of my Jackjack with her. When Tam brought Callie to me, she met Jack, and she said that if I every couldn't keep either one of them, to come to her because a rescued cat stays rescued. She only met Jack that time and one other, but it doesn't matter. She's taking care of him now, too.) 

We were in the car to Louisville to pick Rufio up when the press called the election for Biden. (Weirdly, the first push notification I received was from the BBC, followed by a text from my pseudo-brother. All the other news sources I follow took a while longer. But this did a bit to raise our mood. We spent much of the rest of the drive talking about how there would be science in the white house again, and a first lady who has a PhD and is a community college professor and a second gentleman who is Jewish and a VP who is a woman of color. We also took GREAT delight in the four seasons landscaping presser. 

(I am very pleased with Pennsylvania, as my home state, btw.)

Of course, given the country's slide towards fascism and trump's refusal to concede and the cowardice of the gop to speak against him, I'm still terrified. 

Watching the acceptance speeches by Harris and Biden on Saturday night had me, literally, in tears and feeling hope that I hadn't in a long time. But it also made me think of Tamnonlinear and how much I wish she were here for the positive changes. 

I don't have a point to any of this. I just wanted to document what's been going on. And it feels *wrong* to not write about Tam during this time of year. On one hand, missing her is a default state, whether I talk about her or not, but if I can keep her around via memory and words a little longer, I will.  I have abandoned LJ, alas. Find me, comment to me, on DW, please!

 In these days of daily Zoom calls (and appropriately also the day that analyst Jeffrey Toobin was suspended from the New Yorker for masturbating while on a video conference), it seems like today is the perfect day for what just happened.

I'm teaching entirely online this semester. (Next semester, barring Covid shutting down the whole campus, I'm teaching 1/2 online and 1/2 in the classroom.) As we've switched to an 8 week block system for at least the duration of the pandemic (and that's whole other story but man I hope this doesn't stick), we've just finished up the first fall block courses and started the second. I'm teaching the same course that I taught in block 1, so I made some changes to better help students based on what I saw happen in block 1. One of the things I implemented was the requirement for every student to come to my virtual office hours this week, just to introduce themselves and so that they're comfortable with office hours later in the semester if/when they need it. (Almost no one used my office hours in block 1, or did only at the course's end, and then commented on how much they wish they'd spoken with me sooner about assignments and things.) 

Today a student who has so far been exemplary signed in to Zoom. Apparently he didn't know that his mic was on, even though his video was off. (I assume he thought the two are connected, but they're not.) So he spent the first few minutes of his being in the Zoom room talking on the phone to someone else. That part's fine if something of a waste of my time. The part that isn't fine? Is when he said to the person on the phone "Oh she's kind of ugly" once my camera turned on. 

Look, I can mouth the platitudes about beauty not being everything all day long, just like anyone else. But after months of seeing myself on Zoom, and of gaining weight (thanks pandemic and lack of self-restraint when it comes to sweets), my opinion of my attractiveness is at an all time low. (There's something about seeing myself in Zoom rather than a mirror that just highlights all the flaws that I've spent decades overlooking.) 

It's not the student's fault. Was it rude? Sure, but the student is probably 18 and certainly didn't mean for me to hear. But it was an unpleasant reminder that the world judges us, especially women, on looks, and mine have always been lacking. 

I don't need-- or frankly want-- my students to find me attractive. (That'd be gross.) But I'd like for them to not judge me based on appearance and preferably not remind me that most of the rest of the world agrees with them. (It's awfully hard to say looks don't matter when you're single at 41.)

So, I dunno, let this be a lesson to you to always be sure your mic is muted when you don't want someone on Zoom to hear you disparage her.  I have abandoned LJ, alas. Find me, comment to me, on DW, please!

 I feel like crud, but at least it's not emotional crud? For the past few days I've been low-key nauseated and light-headed, which has not been fun. Especially since my university switched to 8 week blocks instead of full semesters. (They used the pandemic as an excuse but I think it's something administration wanted to do anyway.) This means that block 1 classes ended on Monday, finals go through tonight, and block 2 classes start tomorrow. So in between bouts of misery in which I can do nothing, I've been working on all of that.... Students are panicked about the end of block 1; other students are panicked about the start of block 2. Everyone is burned out on this whole covid thing. (The university even sent students home for 2 weeks because we had community spread.) 

So yeah. 

I saw one of the school's counselors again yesterday and it was fine. I need to look for someone I can work with long term, but she's helping. Mostly I came out of the session with the suggestion that I should do NaNoWriMo. (I've never done NaNo because November is a terrible month for academics to try and write a novel.) I'm going to modify it (mostly I'm not starting something new) and I'm not going to, like, do any of the official things. (They all seem cool, but that's not where my head is at right now.) Basically, it's 1 month (or maybe I'll start early.. Told you I'm modifying it) where I can spend significant time writing and not feel guilty. 

I feel guilty all the time. Well, all the time that I don't feel worried. I should  be doing something useful. I should be grading or cleaning (omg, you guys, my house is so gross right now.) There's yardwork and housework and laundry and dishes and .... So while I love writing, I think of it as a fun thing, a pleasure and therefore something that induces guilt. But not this (well, next) month!  I hope. :)

It's 9:30 at night. I have gotten the bare minimum of things done that I needed to today (mainly having my classes ready to open for tomorrow, since I'm teaching entirely online.) And I feel so icky that I'm going to go shower and go to bed. And yeah, I feel guilty about that too.  I have abandoned LJ, alas. Find me, comment to me, on DW, please!

 I'm still here. 

I've been doing better. I saw a new counselor, which was awkward (face masks. And she works for the university) but also kind of nice. My psychiatrist agreed that the medicine switch-- even though it was just formulations-- may have caused the crash and switched me back. The rest of the week was better; not 100% but miles and miles past where I was Tuesday/Wednesday. Friday was fine. Saturday was weird in that it took me all day to get done what I thought I could do in a couple hours, but emotionally I was fine (if irritated.) 

Today's my birthday though. And while I think it's a given that all pandemic birthdays kind of suck, it's still kind of hard. The one person I expected to see forgot/was busy. So it's been a day like any other except I thought, oh heck, let's bake a cake. But while it's not finished, it seems like it kind of sucks (too much salt, I think. I now believe I grabbed the wrong measuring spoon) and I'm not keen on the chocolate buttercream frosting I made. But we'll see what happens if/when I put it all together. (It's cooling.) I nearly set the oven on fire, though, because the batter overflowed. Oops. 

I don't have a point except to say I'm still here and I'm okay-ish, but today kind of sucks. It's not Tuesday-night-I-don't-want-to-exist bad, but man, if this is what life is from here on out, what's the fucking point?  I have abandoned LJ, alas. Find me, comment to me, on DW, please!

 Typically, I'm a hurry-up-and-wait kind of girl. What I mean is, when I have to get something done,  I'll do things in a flurry of activity (clean? dishes? cat boxes? grading?) and I'll also be super lazy and lie on the couch. (some other day I'll investigate a bit more about all of that but that's not today's point.) But when I'm in a depressive episode, everything takes so much more effort. Getting out of bed, putting on clothes, brushing my teeth-- each of those things that I don't even think about (well, I think about the bed thing) on a normal day is exhausting to even consider on a day like today. 

I'm better off than yesterday. I'm not in a constant state of crying or on the verge of tears. I started improving yesterday evening, in fact. By that time, I'd already called my psychiatrist's office and reached out to the counseling services at my college to make an appointment for today. I started to think I'd overreacted-- surely I didn't need a new counselor at the university when I already had a phone session scheduled for today. (The phone session was scheduled previously, with a therapist I know nothing about. It's just required at my psychiatrists office that you check in with one of their therapists every three months.) Surely sandwiching two therapy sessions in between the regular work of a Thursday (and I'm behind in grading-- I'm always behind in grading. All I ever do is grade, it seems, and yet I'm behind) would be excessive. After all, I was no longer sobbing. 

But I'm numb and sad and moving like the world is water and I have to push through its resistance. The beep of a news article indicator on my phone gives me a sour stomach out of concern about what American freedom is being eroded next. Each time my computer jauntily tells me that another email has arrived, my heart sinks at having to deal with whatever it is.

So, I'm going to see the new therapist at 12 and will answer the call to the required therapist at 2. And, shockingly, my psychiatrist's office gave her my message (from yesterday; perhaps the crying on the phone helped?) and she called back. I theorized that this sudden drop might be from our changing a medicine from XL to SR and she agreed it could be and as of today I'm back on XL. So even though it all still feels a bit excessive and it also feels really fucking hard, it's probably all the right thing to do, if only because better safe than sorry.  


I have abandoned LJ, alas. Find me, comment to me, on DW, please!

 I started my LiveJournal in 2001. I only remember this because I can, oddly, picture myself in my college, senior-year dorm room, writing about how I'd probably forget that I had an LJ within a few weeks. Instead, I kept it regularly for more than a decade. I made online friends and kept in contact with IRL ones. 

But what I remember most about LJ is that it saved me. During the long slog that was summer 2001, when I was incredibly depressed but didn't have the language (or diagnosis) for it, writing and getting responses saved me. In grad school, when I got so depressed that I stopped eating and lost enough weight that people thought I was anorexic, writing and getting responses saved me. 

Now it's 2020 and I don't think anything can save anything anymore. And I know that writing here, on DW where I've never had a community and where I don't think community exists anymore anyway, isn't going to garner any responses at all, but I suppose it can't hurt to write.

I'm a mess. I haven't been okay since 2016, not really. Not since Tamnonlinear died. Not since election night. Though to be fair, those two are one and the same. After a time (months? more?) I became functional again. (I don't remember November 2016.) But that time broke off a piece of me. I used to believe people are basically good, especially as individuals. I don't anymore. 

I knew this autumn would be bad. I planned for it, in fact, saying no to work things that I would ordinarily have said yes to. Paring back where I could in order to give myself room for, well, me, I guess. But I didn't expect a global pandemic. (I'd say no one did, but that's not true. Epidemiologists have been predicting something like covid19 for decades.) 

In the past few months, panic attacks have increased substantially, so my doctor and I upped my dosages. It helped. No longer was I freaking about every set-back, every time something raised a bit of uncertainty. When asked, I would have said that anxiety was my main concern; the depression was under control, more or less, other than how the two work together. 

But that's not true anymore. The way I feel today-- the way I felt last night-- was like being thrown back into summer 2001 or fall 2016. I've been crying for hours for no particular reason other than the general existential dread that has settled over me and become a companion these past 4 years. Yes, I have specific worries, but nothing that should have been sobbing all the time. 

I went to bed early and took Advil pm in the hopes of just ... not existing for a while. It helped and I slept and I woke up feeling very slightly better. But I also spent significant time wondering what relief there would be in not existing at all. 

Hamlet, in his famous soliloquy, ends up deciding that the reason we don't all just kill ourselves is out of fear of not knowing what comes next. I would disagree. For me, it's more about not wanting to cause pain to my parents or Pyrite.
I have abandoned LJ, alas. Find me, comment to me, on DW, please!

I'm still here.

This is both a defiant proclamation (that I've come through what I assume/hope is the worst of the grief and its attendant depression) and a comment that has a bit of defeatism in it, when the 'here' in question is eastern Kentucky, unsuccessful, lonely, and still feeling helpless about both my own life and that of the world around me.

tamnonlinear is in my thoughts all the time-- because I miss her, because I mourn her, becuase I have cat questions, and because as much as I love her, I now fear becoming her.

How selfish is that? To mix up my grief over her death with identification with her situation. I don't mean to claim her experience for my own-- there are many differences, she is a different person. But I looked up to her, I admired her, I modeled some of my experiences on hers, so there are similarities. And to say "I won't walk that path" doesn't feel strong; it feels like a betrayal of her somehow.

Her memorial is Saturday. I'm driving up Friday, since it's a 9 hour drive. In the strangest bout of synchronicity, my parents had already planned to be in the area where the memorial is being held during that weekend. So they've gotten me a hotel room for Friday night and on Saturday, after the service, I'll drive up to my parents' house, about 90 minutes away, 'til Monday (when I'll come back here to finish the exam period of the semester, then drive back up for the holidays.) My parents will be there for a concert and they are also going to Longwood Gardens. They invited me along, but I declined. I've never been, but I equate them with Abby, and when I go for the first time, I want to be able to think about her and not be inundated by the Christmas decorations that are up this time of year. (Looking at you, sihaya09)

It's only been a month. There had been times in our friendship when we'd gone longer than that without contact, so on a logical basis it almost seems like it shouldn't matter, but of course there is nothing logical about any of this. Her loss is an enormous hole in my life. Sometimes I find myself smiling or having an okay time, and then I'll suddenly remember that Abby's gone and it feels like someone has kicked me in the stomach. (I'm writing this in my office, which is stupid because it's office hours so students might walk in and I'm sititng here weeping.) It feels like a betrayal to be happy. I don't want to be happy again, in some very real way, because that somehow means I've gotten over it.

I know that my grief and depression have upset other people. I've got my parents worried. I've heard through the grapevine that several colleagues are just avoiding me at work because they don't know what to do about my obvious sadness. (Don't get me wrong-- people at work have also been excellent and very willing to cover my classes and exams.) I work at a religiously affilated institution in the bible belt, so we start meetings with a prayer-- at Thursday's faculty meeting, I just started weeping. I don't know why but every time someone prays around me right now, I cry. I'm not very religious, so I don't know what's up with this.

I don't know that I want to be sad, but in a real way, I also don't want to be happy. Which I'm sure is a problem and I'll bring it up with my therapist... except that she already seems to not know what to do with with me and we've only had three sessions. Under different circumstances (i.e. not eastern Kentucky) I'd find a different therapist, but that's pretty much not an option here. Mental health services are few and far between...  All services are few and far between. For example, I tried to find a suicide loss support group-- nearest one is in WV, 2 hours away.

One consolation is that Abby's cats are safe. Kala and Caliel are doing very well in their new home, although their personalities have changed. Caliel has chosen a room for himself and rarely leaves it, though he is friendly when humans join him. Kala has become outgoing and attention seeking. So all is well there. Jasper and Jaimie are, until tomorrow, in my guest room. They are doing super well. They are delightful and cuddly and seem pretty happy. They're little old lady cats now, which is weird since I always think of them as youngsters, but that doesn't mean they're less mischevious, as least Jasper. I slept in their room last night and was frequently woken up by demands for attention. They're a little shyer and act a little older than Callie (who is their elder by a few months) but they're delightful. I'm really sad to give them up, but since it's to pyrite, I know I'll get lots of updates. And anyway, 7 cats is too many, and it's been really hard splitting my attention amongst them.

(When I remember/figure out how to post pictures to LJ, I'll do so of the kitties.)

That brings me to Jessie and Mia who have been in my home office for a little over three weeks now. I always know where they are because when I come to the door, they hide in the same places they always do. Well, Mia hides. I'm not convinced Jessie ever moves from his spot by the window, hiding behind a curtain. He's skinny and I'm really worried about him. I don't know how to convince them that I will not eat them, that I love them and want them to be happy and comfortable. They were barely comfortable with Abby and only ever on their own terms, and I'm pretty much a stranger.

I've put blankets and pillows in the office so that I have some place to sit comfortably and read, since I can't actually interact with Jessie and Mia. Today they'd been pushed against the door-- so clearly at least one of the cats gets up to something when I'm not there... and potentially they're trying to barricade the door so I can't come in. (Don't they understand I bring the food?!)

So there is a lot of work to be done there... and by work I mainly mean patience and making sure I spend all the time I can with them. (But without upsetting the other three cats. Mr. Marlowe gets sulky without me. If I go away for a few days, he scratches his back raw. When I'm with Jessie and Mia or Jasper and Jaimie, he sits outside the door and cries.)

And this would be why I don't get to keep Jasper and Jaimie.

I tell myself that it will be amazing and an achievement when Jessie and Mia trust me. But I also remember Abby, who was so much better at this than I am, felt the same way about Orpheus, and he never quite got comfortable enough with her to be in her lap. These two are already 12 and their world has been upended. I want to give them everything I can to make them happy, for their own sakes and for Abby's, but there's so little I can do, in real terms...

I think this is enough for now. I have to teach soon and need to stop being all weepy before then. (It's the last day of classes. I can do this.) Tomorrow I drive to Knoxville with the Js (I will be weepy then, too.) Friday I drive to PA for the memorial. I'm going to stay at my parents' house through Sunday so I can go to a church service for people who are grieving during the holidays. I envision a lot more crying in the next few days.

(This is a hell of a way to come back to Livejournal. More about that choice some other day.)

Wednesday morning I received the kind of phone call no one wants. After a brief game of phone tag, I learned that tamnonlinear is gone. She died by suicide sometime the night before.

There is a hole in my heart and my life that I cannot begin to fill, especially not with something as insubstatial as words. And yet, to not write something, to not try to capture at least a piece of the woman who was Abby, and pin it down to memory now, when the memories (and yes, the grief) are freshest, would be a disservice and dishonor to her memory. She was far, far more than this one act. And yet, I find myself paralyzed in finding words...

I was blessed to know a few sides of Abby, but she was a wonder of infinite facets. She touched lives wherever she went, even digitally, and the world is a darker, sadder place without her, for those who knew her in person and those who knew her by her online words.

I don't think it would surprise anyone that Abby's final online words were about her cats. She had 6 these days (Jasper, Jaime, Mia, Jessie, Caliel, and Kala). Abby had what she called a "sucker light," meaning that animals, especially cats, knew she was an easy mark. I don't know if she still did, but for many years she kept cans of cat food in her car just in case she had to rescue a feral or stray. She'd take in these abandoned animals, get them to trust again, and then find them excellent homes. The cats she were harder to place-- too shy, too feral, too unhealthy. I think she found them kindred, as she thought of herself as prickly and maybe broken.

As I write this, I'm in my home office and somewhere in here-- completely hidden at the moment-- are Mia and Jessie. They're terrified and confused and I so desperately want to help them, but I know it will take time and patience.

Time and patience are things I learned a lot about from Abby. She didn't complain when a former-feral or rescue cat didn't give her love or trust her, or, in the case of some of a few notable cats, howled in the basement for a few months or lived inside the springs of a recliner for a while. She loved them just the same and they learned that and they responded to that and they loved her back. She once built a wee palace for a cat she named Portia who was too timid to come inside but wanted to watch everything within Abby's home (especially her other cats.) The house Abby built had a window against the window to Abby's kitchen, so that Portia could see, and it had a heated bed and shingles on the roof to keep it dry. Eventually Portia trusted Abby enough to accept pets and love and companionship.

It wasn't just cats, though, for which Abby had seemingly infinite patience and attention for the minutest of details. She had a patch of woods near her house where she'd frequently spend time. It became the final resting place of the cats who passed away. She knew every inch of it. She spent one summer and fall watching the decay of a deer, and years watching the surprisng growth of a sycamore tree that had been damaged when it was young. Closer to home, she cultivated a wild backyard, happy to let things grow and flourish where they were planted, usually through happenstance and nature. She'd ruthlessly take out invasive species and nurture what nature otherwise brought her. (Which was sometimes possums.)

She was unsentimental. She didn't keep things, especially compared to my own packrat existence. She claimed that she hated people, but she belied that statement every single day. She would go without food to donate to an internet friend's fund. When I went through tough times, she gave me a key to her house so that I could come over, any time, and crash (I was driving from one state to another to do so) no matter what. Last year, when she changed the locks on her house, she mailed me a key so that I wasn't locked out.

Over the years her interests shifted, as they do for all of us. I remember her doing Scottish dancing. She took me with her once and I was as terrible and it was fun. She frequently went to Chanty Sings and renaiszsance faires. In the last few years, her attention turned to clinic escorting, with the Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force. She was, from my understanding, very good at it, and very good at being non-confrontational with protestors, even when I think she would have, in many ways, preferred to gve them a dose of logic.

She was always up for some adveture, though like me maybe not always too much adventure. I remember one time we had planend to meet up with some of her friends in DC, but it was rainy and trafficy and we didn't have an exact address and she gave up and we went back to her place instead. On another adeventure, though, when I was researching my disseration, she happily came with me-- drove, in fact-- to see two outdoor Shakespearean productions. I had planned to see the first one twice, a park production of As You Like It, I think, but we agreed it wasn't very good. So Abby hopped online and the next night found us driving around farmland and unknown roads to find a production of Titus Andronicus done with a set made of an antique farmtruck with stuff glued to it, a bunch of hay bales, and imagination. We sat on a blanket from her car and ate oreos and it was one of the most fun evenings of theatre I've ever experienced, made better by the company.

Abby was brilliant and widely read. At the foot of her bed there was a trunk and it always held stacks of what she was reading or would be next. Retellings of "Tam Lin", of course, some of which, by the way, she hated, were always around so that she could include them on Tam-Lin.org, but there were also books on science and language and various novels.

I know those books were there because when I would visit, she would give mer her room and she'd retreat to sleep in her office on a smaller bed. I'd have been perfectly happy sleeping in the office, but Abby gave comfort to friends. Her room was painted beautifully in blue and had a bed whose headboard was decorated in a magpie collection of shiny objects-- one of the few places you'd find baubles in Abby's house. Often, the sheets were leopard print; one of those weird quirks about Abby that always seemed just a bit out of place was her fondness for leopard print.

She did not, however, like pictures. Art in her house did not have faces. She would not let herself be photographed except under extreme duress. I have no photographs of her. When I try to picture her in my mind, I see her wild red curls, her big glasses, and an expression that was somehow both puzzled by the whole world and patiently waiting for it to catch up and catch on. She also looked good in hats; she claimed it was one of her talents, but that it wasn't a particularly useful one.

One of her talents that many people enjoyed, though, was her ability to bake brownies. These weren't from a mix or a powder-- they were alchemical magic, different every time, requiring days of work and created anew each time she made them. When I raised money to TNR a colony of feral cats, she donated batches for a raffle, and they raised a lot of money and made their recipients very happy.

She made other things the way she made brownies, too-- she decided she didn't want carpets, so she pulled them up. She decided she couldn't find the winter coat she really wanted, so she went forward and made one. She had no training in either of these activities, she just moved forward and did them and eventually it worked.

The last time I saw Abby in person was a few years back while I was still living in AZ. A friend and I had found two cats, one of which had been attacked and needed surgery to remove an eye. The friend and I got the cats healthy, but couldn't find homes for them, especially together. So, when I flew home to PA for a holiday, Abby bought me a second ticket (since you cannot fly with more than one animal) and paid for the cats' airfare, then drove to PA from MD to get the cats and then drove them down to someone in the Carolinas who she trusted to adopt them. (The last I heard, from Abby, about these two, included pictures of them being incredibly well loved and happy.)

The last time Abby and I texted was a little more than a week before her death. I had texted to tell her that my turtle, Shelby, had passed away, since she'd known he'd been sick a long time. She of course expressed her sorrow. I said that on the bright side, since Shelby had liked people so much, he had seemed pretty pleased by having to go to the vet every three days for shots, because he had a fan club. The last text she sent me, since it was late and we ended the conversation there, was that that's not the worst thing to say about about a life. He had a thing he liked to do and he did it.

Abby, I think you had a lot of things you liked and I hope you got to do them. I'm so very, very sorry that none of us saw how much you were hurting, that we weren't more intrusive and insistent on helping. I think you knew that so many of us love you, and I wish you had made a different choice, and had held on longer, but I have also walked those dark paths with the depression demons, and I can understand their seductive, insidious voices.

I don't know how to live up to her legacy of compassion and kindness. I still have the key tso her house, now just talismans to a memory of a loved one lost. I have three cats from her-- Callie, who I adopted from her the first time I met her and who is my baby girl, and Mia and Jessie who ... I've been writring for almost an hour now and I still haven't seen them, but they're in here somewhere... I have little reminders, ways that our friendship has changed me, such as how I shout "Monster!" every time I pull out the vacuum cleaner in order to warn the cats what's coming. I have deep, deep regrets and I have memories.

And I know she'd want us to be kind to ourselves. It's how she finished almsot every converasation with me, exorting me to be kind to myself, something that I know doesn't come easily to a lot of us depression sufferers. I wish, oh I wish... But in the moment I assume that the end felt like a kindness. I wish she'd not been alone. I wish she'd not been in such pain. I wish... I wish...

Be kind to yourselves.