Yesterday when I came home from FIU, Eleven, in heat, climbed on my shoulders per usual as I read something on the computer. She fell off my shoulder and instinctively clawed at anything to break her fall. That would be my left hand. I felt the skin rip.
The first one this morning.
I told my family and sent them the first couple photos but I have not told them this. I felt bad about myself. Then that evening I discovered a brown stain on the rear of my good linen pants. I had soiled myself at FIU after eating a steak sandwich garnished with jalapeno peppers Monday night.
These accidents, especially Eleven's, have tilted me. I feel not in control. I am doubting my competence at life. Somehow, I can't prevent an itty-bitty three pound cat from mauling me as if I had fallen into a lion's cage at the zoo. It has affected my psychology and emotions. "Is it weird of me to post so many photos?" So, I deleted some in this post. I am embarrassed that my cat fell and accidentally clawed me. One of the photos above I took when I was in Publix. It looks like I got attacked with a claw hammer. I was afraid people might look bug-eyed at it. I feel humiliated. My nerves are frayed. I can't stop taking photos of it. Can't stop looking at it.
It was an accident. Not Eleven's fault. Not my fault certainly, but not intentional on Eleven's part.
Yes, but this type of accident is exactly what I have long feared could happen to my carotid artery, in which event I would not be alive to write this post.
But my hand looks worse than it is. I felt it of course, but the real sting came when I washed it. The cuts are only skin deep, no puncture wounds or damage to tendons or nerves. No (real) harm, no foul?
I know it's not my fault, nor Eleven's, but I interrogate myself: "What do you mean taking a random stray cat in and treating it like it's a baby human? "Honey"; "I love you"; "my little girl", etc. Eleven is not a little girl, she's not human. But I treat her as if she was, even talk to her. "I'm going to go get some food honey, daddy will be right back." I'm not her father. But I love her. I have felt love, or as close as a cat can get to love, from her. She was the only full-time roommate I ever had here and the last! But now...
After this happened yesterday afternoon I kept us separate, she in the room I'm not. We're separate now. I haven't talked to her, haven't cooed at her, haven't played with her. I don't miss yet that closeness, that faux closeness. She is a plant or a wall hanging now, not my beloved sentient companion in my golden years.
You know how you read that people are badly beaten, maimed by a random stranger? I've read that in a weird way they fault themselves. Like, "There must be something particularly loathsome about me that a random stranger picks me to hurt so badly. Maybe I am so unlovable that I deserved it." That shit happens, some victims of random violence do think that shit.
Anyway, "With writing so much pain disappears". I needed to talk to someone about how I feel and now I've gotten it off my chest to all of you. I can't stop looking at the hand but maybe now at least I can stop taking gross autopsy photos of it.
