Sometimes, It’s OK to Meow in the Basement
Sven is a cat of very particular tastes. Sven requires that his box not only be scooped in a thorough and timely manner, but also that there be a fresh scent of Febreze gently sprayed over his newly cleaned toilet. There are, of course, consequences for not complying with Sven’s preferences.
Sven will look you straight in the eye, trot down the stairs, sit next to the boxes (I have three cats) and meow like he has just endured a capital offense. He doesn’t ‘just’ meow. He makes a whole performance of it. You can walk away, but you’re still going to hear his opinion from all over the house. (And, if he gets REALLY mad, he will just poo, NEXT to his box, but that is another essay).
I’ve realized that Sven is not doing this SOLEY to be difficult. His environment is, for him, hostile, out of sorts, and therefore, problematic. He cannot have excrement where it should not be. Sven will not tolerate an existence with ‘shit everywhere’. But, he cannot physically do anything about it. He just walks into his water closet, sees disordered sewage, and comes undone. Who wouldn’t?
Like most of the other 7 billion people enduring this crappy apocalypse, I am so used to the endless bombardment of horrifying news, and personal crisis, that I am becoming numb to it. Perhaps from exhaustion. Perhaps from mental and emotional self-defense. After the relentless, miserable grind of covid, I, like many other health care workers, stopped, looked around at my life and had a Sven-like breakdown.
Being in survival mode for so long, just constantly having to react, made me forget what having ANY sort of LIFE actually looked like. I know this is not unique to health care workers. What I found actually surprising was that I was relatively functional when I was so steeped in overtime, I never REALLY looked around at the entirety of my life, health, and relationships.
I recently had to take 2 weeks off of work for health reasons. Totally OFF. No other goals, courses, or work from home extras. There was a very eerie nothingness in my house. On the third day, finally caught up on sleep, I realized that I was going to have to make some major changes to EVERY part of my life, from employment, to relationships, to household finances. I had been in survival mode so long, I had not looked around. When I stopped to do so, I saw metaphorical ‘shit everywhere’. So, I had a couple of panic attacks.
Usually, I am a pretty good planner. When encountering a problem, I am normally able to break it into pieces, and make a plan to solve it. However, for the first time in a nearly a decade, everything came apart at once. I didn’t know where to even start, because every decision was intertwined with other decisions and outcomes. Worse, the ways I had learned to plan, react, respond, and view my life had all become obsolete. My past experiences are light years away from my present circumstances. My future, and the way I hoped it would be, is lost. It was overwhelming, and I just wanted to scream into the abyss. So I did. I took a day and just ranted, yelled, and raged over what a mess everything was. Like Sven, I ‘meowed in the basement’. It was very therapeutic.
Everyone (who is not independently wealthy) is facing varying degrees of this. We have been clenching our jaws, and putting our heads down, but at some point, something’s gonna give. Multiple things fail at once. This is not normal. This is not easy. Our previous ways of navigating life just won’t work anymore — and that is terrifying.
The first thing we have to do is ADMIT that we are in a previously unknown set of circumstances. The next thing we have to do is grieve the past, and then the future. Both versions of those things we envisioned for so long, are no longer in existence. Before we can move forward, we must recognize and feel this loss and the anger and grief it brings. After we process those things, we can move on, but not before. It is shitty, and maddening, and unfair. So, for a time, be furious, be worried, be sad. Give yourself space to feel all those things.
Sometimes, it’s OK to meow in the basement.
