Jonesy's Box

Tiny dirty stray kitten hanging out at the bottom of our stairs since yesterday. There are a lot of self-reliant ferals around our apartment, but this little thing was dirty & covered in burrs. We gave it some chicken but couldn’t catch it. I think it may have wandered over from the outdoor cat hoarder colony down the street; that house is awful & we saw kittens there last week.

This morning the downstairs neighbor managed to grab it for us, and I put it on this cozy towel & started combing and picking the burrs & sticks out of its fur. It calmed down immediately and has been chilling here with me in the kitchen ever since. Got a vet appointment in an hour to get my little buddy cleaned up & checked out. I hope it isn’t too sick; I think it might have a cold.

I still remember when I was a young teen and he was playing a Nirvana song and he stopped it at this one line: “I miss the comfort of being sad”

He told me that when you start to get better, there’s a part of you that misses being sad and that if you start feeling that way you have to be extra extra aware and careful because if you indulge the feeling you’ll go down a self-destructive spiral

And even though that was years and years ago, I think about it all the time. Especially when I’m reading discourse on the idea of getting so attached to mental illness as an identity that you don’t want to improve things because you feel safe in it and don’t know who you are without it

you’ll be able to hold it in your hands, feel the weight of it - each chapter, each page, each word that you so lovingly crafted. you’ll be able to watch each scene, something you built and tended and know most intimately, unfold beneath your hands again with every turn of the page. you’ll be able to run your thumb down the spine of the book and feel the shape of your name pressed into the side, because this is yours.

Always the same story