Orbiting my last sun.
I thought freedom would be worth it until I lost you; until I was free. Nothing in this life feels more lonely than your missing shadow on the heated ground of a summer day where it used to meet mine. You used to have a head full of hair. I used to sleep alone.
My cat doesn’t have insomnia like I do.
She’s showing complete trust to a stranger. I’m the stranger. I’ve been the stranger for a long time, maybe as long as I wanted to be free. Then I took a chance on a whim. I reverse engineered my way into belonging by doing the one thing I hated.
I let someone else into my space.
And then I fucking struggled with it. I thought about giving her up a dozen times. Go back to that starless peace. She leaves a trail of chaos in my still little world; she breathed life into a dead room. Then she laid down next to me like I was incapable of doing harm to someone and it broke me. Because I used to hurt myself all the time for no other reason that I didn’t think I didn’t deserve it. I’ve always been just cruel enough to carry the bruise on accident like you bump into something. Sorry, I bumped into shame again. I can’t go out this weekend.
Sorry, mom.
I used to not like myself and feel guilty for not being able to lie to you about it. Like I should at least pretend. This life has been difficult as long as it didn’t feel like mine; it’s like I had to grow into my own shoes. I thought everybody had the answers, I thought you did. I was the only stranger to the right way of doing things, the recipe to be a real person. It took me so long to trust myself enough to make decisions on my own.
It’s hard not to second guess myself when people I admire walk a different path.
It’s still hard to trust myself.
Hold myself accountable for the ways I ignore my own feelings, my own well being. Hold others accountable for their own shit.
I only have two feet, but so many fucking miles to walk when I reach out. I always overextend my help. I think I believe that’s the sacrifice to pay to be loved as a stranger. I’m an incomplete soul but a kind one. Please don’t give up on me – as I give up on myself.
But now I’m orbiting my last sun.
I’m no stranger here when the shoes I felt I needed to fill burned with you. You died, but I’m still alive. I had no choice but to be me apart from you. It killed me, except it didn’t; it killed everything but me. I had to shift the focus, I decided it was my life after all.
So I got a cat.
She and I, we’re orbiting the same sun.
It’s home.
The space we share, the time spent in silence. I thought about going back to a starless sky a dozen times. But there’s more joy in this life than there was in all of my self-absorbed contemplations. I walk home faster when there’s someone waiting for me. I ask less questions because life is simpler with a cat. And now, I don’t feel like putting this life on the line to rescue someone else. I guess it was easier to do before, when it didn’t feel like my own life was worth my own time.
Not anymore.
Not when home feels enough.
That’s why I think it’s the last. I don’t think there’s anything as important as the home one builds to their own image.
This one is mine and I like it.