The Cats of My Life: Allie

I think I was in sixth grade when I got Allie. It was a big deal. Our previous cat (who I haven’t talked about yet) had died and I’m not sure if we had gotten Cleo yet or not. My mother had a friend at work who ran a rescue group, and for the first time I was to go and pick out a cat for me.

The place was just an apartment overcrowded with cats of every color. I do remember there was this big orange one my mother wanted, but I wasn’t sure, there were just so many! Then this big grey tabby tomcat jumped on a garbage can and called me over. He was the one. Being uncreative in the naming department at the time, he became “Allie” because he was an Alley cat.

When we took him home it turns out he was sick, so he had to stay in my room for a while. At the time I had a ‘big sister’ through the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program. We did somethings, but for the post part she just brought me stuff back from her travels, a lot of cat items because at the time my motto was “Animals are my favorite people.” One of the items that she had brought me from Italy was a hand-painted scarf that I used on top of my dresser. Of course, that was Allie’s favorite spot to lie as he drooled out his illness. All the inks ran.

Allie was a big boy, and just a glorious cat. My brother commented on how scared he was all the time. But our house wasn’t exactly quiet. I used to have this one Polaroid picture of Allie curled up in a ball surrounded by my dolls. He was just so beautiful.

Sometime later Allie had urinary blockage and was in the hospital. When he returned I read up on ash and magnesium and how to take care of him so the crystals didn’t build up.

I don’t have any pictures of Allie anymore, I don’t know what happened to them. The only ones I even remember is the one I mentioned above and one where he was, I think, in-between the screen door and main door. My brother used to lock him out on the back porch because Allie would jump up through the hole in the screen door and balance to get our attention.

Should I warn you now, this doesn’t have a happy ending? There is a lot I blank out on about Allie and the memory I do have was the first one I worked on with my current doctor. It’s called ‘Immersion Therapy’ and I have to close my eyes and keep going back into the memory and telling it and connecting to all the emotions and that whole unification process I talked about. I also have to recognize the situation and that what happened wasn’t my fault.

I think there was something to do with cat litter. There is a vague recollection of my mother throwing the litter box into my room, and I put up my hands or feet to deflect it and it spills all over. She’s yelling at me, screaming. I don’t even see her, just the darkness that is her in my memory and those piercing grey-blue thundercloud eyes. She’s raging. Something about not doing my chores, not cleaning the litter box, not being responsible.

The next part I remember is trying to hide Allie and myself. She had threatened to take him away, said I couldn’t take care of him. I know I could take care of him; I already had through two illnesses. But my mother is claiming I don’t deserve the cat.

In the next part I remember I’m screaming, crying. She has taken Allie away, said she was bringing him to the pound to teach me a lesson. I don’t let up all night. How could she do that? How could she take away my animal, one she made such a show of me getting, for whatever her reasoning was? How could she so callously strip me of some living thing I loved?

The next day she says that because I’m being such a brat and to shut me up she’ll go get him back. Nothing about her feeling guilty for what she’s done. I just want her to understand how much she hurt me. That she, the mother, has caused me great pain. When she returns she tells me that he is dead. “They got a lot of animals in that night and put him to sleep,” she tells me. “He was just so frightened they didn’t think he’d do well. You know, if you hadn’t tried to hide him and scared him even more he’d probably be alive right now.” She continues by saying that now we can’t get another cat from the shelter because she has been added to the database of people who bring their pets in.

That was the part that hurt me for so many years – she blamed me. If I hadn’t of tried to hide him, he’d be alive. She shifted all of the blame on me. For so long I carried that burden. If I hadn’t have chosen him but gone with the orange cat, Allie would have lived a longer and happier life. Maybe the orange cat would have died in his place, maybe not. If I had just done the chores my mother told me too, if I had acquiesced, if I hadn’t tried to hide him, if, if, if. They swarmed around.

Bottom line though is she killed my cat and took the coward’s way out by shifting the blame to me, a 12-year old girl, her daughter. Instead of taking responsibility for hurting her children and now, taking a life, she passed the buck and rationalized how she was in the right and everyone else was wrong and ‘caused things to happen’ or ‘caused her to do things.’

How dare she. How dare she take a life that I loved, destroy it, and blame me. It’s taken a while to get to the point where I can say it with conviction, and I’d love to add a few curse words in here, but how dare she ever do such a thing. I think that was a major turning point for me. After Allie died I remember being filled with rage toward everyone. I hated so much. The love in my life was so horrifically taken away and I just blamed myself. However, I think I did begin to realize, somewhere within me, that there was no chance of my mother redeeming herself in my eyes. It started me down the road to total disgust with her, a road that has helped me separate myself from her actions and from believing I could ever be like that monster.

Picture from: http://www.allcrossstitch.co.uk

Shame

Guilt, shame, self-doubt, worthlessness. These all swim in the same sea – the one I’m fighting against drowning in. Shame is such a hard one, such a strong one. I feel shameful at times for things I didn’t do, things I feel I could have stopped but just didn’t have the strength to do. It always amazes me when people say I’m strong. Nowadays, it’s just this sense that I have to do what is right, not that my actions are in anyway spectacular, but I can’t sit by and not act as often anymore.

It’s summer now here in good old New York City and besides that meaning the mass exodus of the homeless out of shelters and into the parks and doorways, it also means the time of charity walks. I have gotten numerous e-mails from former students and acquaintances to donate for the AIDS walk, the Revlon walk, the American Cancer Society walk against breast cancer. Usually, I’m fine with these. But now that I’m peeling off band-aids to allow these emotional scars to heal in the open air, well, I’m a bit raw. So I open one and suddenly:

It’s seventh grade. I’m close friends with this girl, I’ll call her Jessy since I’ve forgotten her real name. She can’t share my candy because she has diabetes.

“What’s that?” I ask, and she explains, telling harrowing stories of dialysis and needles and, worst of all, not being able to share in my sweet bounty. I put it away and we go back to riding our bikes up and down the street.

Cut to me finding out that there is going to be a Diabetes walk in my hometown. I’m ecstatic. I can help Jessy! The school isn’t doing a group, and neither Jessy nor I are exactly “popular.” We aren’t picked on, but we aren’t in any social groups either, so there is no one else to go with me. However, my teachers are happy to see me doing this. Most of them sponsor me.

When Jessy hears, she can’t believe that I’m doing the walk for her.

I do the walk and proudly wear my shirt to school. I still remember, it’s white with a Red sneaker. Jessy hugs me, and the teachers who sponsored me pay in checks and cash. In all, I raised sixty dollars.

My mother tells me that she’s going to take the money and put it in one check to make it easier. She’ll hold on to it so I don’t lose it. I give it to her; happy she’ll help me in some way. A few months later a teacher pulls me aside and asks if I remembered to send her check in as it wasn’t cashed. I get that sinking in the pit of my stomach.

“What happened to the money?” I ask my mother that night.

“I needed it for lunch,” she replies.

“But, what about the checks? Didn’t you at least send them in?” I ask, confused, hurt.

“No, because then the amount wouldn’t match what’s on your sponsor sheet. I didn’t want them to think you took the money.”

My mind whirls.

“We can send it without the sheet,” I say. “At least send the checks,” I beg as I become even more confused. Even as I write this now I feel the confusion set it, the slight dizziness.

“No honey, I don’t think so,” she replies as I look up at her face. Then, she puts a hand on my shoulder. “I really need lunch sweetie,” she says, her storm-cloud gray eyes boring into mine.

The shame. She didn’t send it in because it would look like I took the money. But I didn’t, she did. However, by denying my mother the money I’m also denying she, who works so hard for my brother and I, something she needs. I couldn’t rectify my knowledge that this is wrong versus her discussion that it was right.

Somehow, I felt the teachers looked at me differently after that. The checks were never cashed. And Jessy, I had let her down. I did the walk, raised the money, and then in the end just felt guilty that my mother had stolen the money for her lunches and refused to even send in the checks. Why did I still trust her? Why did I believe that she would help me? Why did I give her the money to begin with? What was supposed to be a good deed turned into something so awful. I was wracked with guilt and shame.

When I received the e-mails this year about charities, that sense of shame welled up again. It was strong. I couldn’t eat, I felt nauseous, my stomach started turning in on itself. There are a lot of physiological effects involved in PTSD and anxiety. I found the Diabetes Association and felt I should give them not just their 60$ but interest as well. Only, I’m in debt myself now, I can’t afford it. This made me feel even worse. Not only did I take let them down so long ago, but I can’t make up for it now. If I was going to send them money, that would mean not paying another bill.

Here’s the thing – I didn’t take the money. I was doing a good thing. I was becoming aware of ways to help others. I was in 7th grade and trying to support my friend and my mother is the one who turned it into something awful. This is the example of the internal dialogue that makes me feel so fragmented. There is the soul-eating shame and then the realization that it isn’t my burden to bear. Why must I feel responsible for the sins of my mother?

And no, in the end I haven’t sent in a check. My doctor told me I shouldn’t out of shame for a perceived wrong, one I never committed. It’s fine to send one because I want to, but not to fix the past deed of my mother. I need to face that fact – what I did was good, what she did was not. She and I are not the same, nor am I the one to atone for her deeds.

It’s all just so incredibly hard.