Loss

This isn’t a happy post.

I haven’t been streaming consistently over the past year and a bit. I haven’t been focused at work. I haven’t been able to write posts for this blog. I haven’t been able to do much more than play video games, and even then, that’s been a stretch. I’ve spent a lot of time in the stereotypical funk that has you stuck in bed doing nothing.

Some of this is a continuation of the issues I complained about in my post about the way things never stop: challenges with physical and mental health and the systems that just barely help to support them. More recently it’s been driven off a cliff by a more universally awful experience… loss.

In less than a year I’ve lost my grandfather, my grandmother, and Atlas. These were the only grandparents I’d ever met, who were ever involved in my life, as well as my beloved cat of 9 years. They weren’t the first family members or the first pet I’ve ever lost… but between the other challenging things happening in my life, the losses cut deeper and weighed heavier than others have in the past. I just wasn’t in a place to handle them, but it’s not like we ever have a choice in the matter.

With how difficult things have been I can’t help feeling like I peaked at the start of the pandemic and this mess I have now is a new normal. Maybe my health has gotten the better of me, maybe losing these important people has finally broken whatever naive energy used to drive me through my projects and my work, maybe this is just how life is now. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

But I don’t want to believe any of that.

There are still good things I can do. I’ve had small episodes of function where I felt good about my work, where I managed to do some writing for NaNoWriMo, where I was plugging away at a personal project to draw spell circles with web code. I’ve had patches where I managed to get into exercise routines, put myself in a non-last-place position on the modded BeatSaber leaderboards, or play through new games altogether.

This week, after a month of grieving, I decided to fill the cat-shaped hole in my little family. For the better part of a decade we had 3 cats at home – and after losing Atlas it was difficult and quiet with only two… I meant to adopt one, but a pair of siblings were too loving to separate, so I adopted two kittens and now there are four little balls of fluff roaming around the apartment like little cheerfulness faucets.

Things never really get ‘better’ from a loss. I’ll always miss my grandparents, and the way we used to visit their cottage every weekend and make pancakes with grandma. I’ll miss my grandfather lighting up campfires and doing a terrible impersonation of Santa Claus every year. I’ll miss Atlas, and the way he used to indignantly complain about every little injustice right before curling up to cuddle with me. I’ll miss them, but I’ll find new things to love and be happy about, so those losses aren’t the only things I feel every day, so they aren’t dragging me down and keeping me from having anything good in my life.

It’s not easy. I just hope it gets easier over time.