Ya know, all that bullshit I have heard for all my life about how it’s important to have the3 right attitude might just be true.
It’s just not that simple.
Or maybe it is, I don’t know. Maybe my own blinkered ignorance has me thinking that you can’t just choose to have a different attitude towards life when you totally can and I am just afraid to see it because then I would have to change.
I don’t fucking know. And I don’t fucking care, either, really.
Maybe life doesn’t always require answers, for fuck’s sake. Make shit up!
Regardless, from where I am right now, it feels like an attitude adjustment is more something I have to work towards than something I can simply will into being.
Maybe I’m wrong. Doesn’t matter. Fuck it.
I know that I still have a lot of negative emotion within me to deal with. Whole fields of pain, fear, aversion, and of course our old buddy anger lie waiting for be harvested and processed into the healing my shattered soul so badly needs.
Man I am getting expressive. I may lapse into poetry at any moment.
Recent revelations have certainly sped things along. Getting to the root of my whole feeling like I did something to make people stop loving me as a child has been a godsend in terms of moving a massive amount of emotion so that it can be expressed through words and thus finally dealt with by lil ol me.
Must remember, I don’t have to remain frozen in place waiting for love. Nothing bad is going to happen if I am not “ready” when some imaginary entity wants to pay attention to and validate me. The “Fasten Seatbelt” light is off and I am free to move around.
That needs to be my new mantra. I am free.
Perhaps part of the problem is that this absurd notion of waiting to be loved was, and is, in fact, my last connection to the belief that someone out there does care and will, some day, come to rescue me.
Like I have said many times before, the worst fear of all children is abandonment, and I think hanging on to that belief was a way for me to dodge the realization that I had, indeed, been abandoned by absolutely everyone.
That little fox Fruvous just keeps waiting for the people to forgive him for whatever he did and let him come back inside and me warm and loved.
And as heartbreaking as that is, do you really want him to stop? What then?
And what then for me? If I can truly convince my inner fox child that nobody is coming, it will of course break his, and my, tiny little heart.
But they’re not coming, precious. You are truly on your own. And it’s up to you whether you just lay down in the snow to die of a broken heart, or get up out of that snowbank and get out of that cold back yard and go find some nice place where there’s fun to be had and people will love and appreciate you.
You might even already be there.
More after the break.
Point of no return
“They’re never coming back. ” whispered a cold but kind voice in Fruvous’ ear. “Face it, my soft friend. They moved away and left you behind. They’re gone now and they are never coming back. Time to get up and move on. ”
In reply, Fruvous simply whimpered and huddled down even deeper into his own fur, back turned to the mouse, muzzle facing the back fence.
If he just stayed like this, he could pretend it wasn’t true. He could pretend the house was as full of light and life and activity as always. He could convince himself that the sounds from the other houses were coming from his, and that everything was normal and good, and the worst possible thing ever had not happened.
All he had to do was make sure to never, ever look at that cold, dark, empty house with nothing but shadows for windows and silence for doors again, and he could keep pretending everything was still okay.
Well, as good as it had ever been, anyhow. Ever since the day they put him out here.
And he had to stay just like this, back turned to the world, because there was another voice, just as cold but nowhere near as kind, waiting for him out there if he dared to look at that awful soulless house again.
And it said things like, “What did you do THIS time, you little red rat, to make them go away? It must have been something truly awful to make them go as far away from you as possible and never come back. You must be a bad, bad fox. Maybe even the worst fox ever. So tell me, you rotten little rodent… WHAT DID YOU DO?”
“But that’s just not true. ” said the kind voice. “You were the best fox ever for them. You were never a bad fox They were just bad people. And there are good people out there who would love to love a sweet little fox like you. But you have to get up and leave this place in order to find them. ”
And Fruvous knew the voice was right. It was just easier, for some reason, to think of himself as a bad fox than to face the fact that the people he loved with all his heart and soul were not good people at all.
He still couldn’t bring himself to blame them for leaving. He would have to think about that later. And he still couldn’t look at that awful dead house that used to be a home.
But he could look at the gate into the backyard that the youngest child had left open for the first time ever. And he could look at the giant bag of kibble the youngest had ripped the top off of and left splayed open on the ground, and the garden hose that had left running for him, and know that for at least a moment, someone had loved him enough to make sure he wouldn’t die of starvation or thirst before running away to get into he moving van and go away forever.
So he couldn’t be that bad of a fox, could he?
And if someone loved him before… maybe someone else could love him again?
So he turned to face that open gate, and think about things.
And for a while, he even stopped whimpering.
I will now lay down and cry for a bit.
But I just have to say that I am one hell of a writer.
Not bad for a fox, eh?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.